


Bronski Beat Transposed For The Gayageum

by lunicole



Category: EXO (Band), NCT (Band), SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canada, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Alternate Universe - Showbusiness, Alternate Universe - Surfers, Angst, Chinese Character, Coming of Age, Cultural Differences, Daddy Issues, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Korean Characters, Korean-American Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Dysfunction, Slice of Life, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:20:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21738232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunicole/pseuds/lunicole
Summary: It’s cheesy, Red Hot Chili Peppers blasting in his earpods as he presses his forehead against the glass, the bus bustling with tourists on their way to the coast. Mark would feel guilty, maybe, in another life, but he doesn’t, not really. His whole body is thrumming with unspent energy, and he smiles, confident, the sun shining through the elongated, towering raincoast trees. The bus driving him away from Vancouver all the way up to surf country on the island is a shitty busted up minivan, bumping over gravel roads crossing the Pacific Rim National Park.It’s nice. Summer is nice, to spend away from the city, away from his parents nagging him about girlfriends and his career and a thousand things that sometimes, sometimes keep Mark up at night when he can’t help himself. Still. Life isn’t too hard, when you’re twenty years old and a little bit lost, but yet the weight of the past and the future isn’t crushing you fully yet on most days.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten, Byun Baekhyun/Kim Junmyeon | Suho, Byun Baekhyun/Mark Lee (NCT), Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun, Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Park Chanyeol, Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 22
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

# Mark

It’s cheesy, Red Hot Chili Peppers blasting in his earpods as he presses his forehead against the glass, the bus bustling with tourists on their way to the coast. Mark would feel guilty, maybe, in another life, but he doesn’t, not really. His whole body is thrumming with unspent energy, and he smiles, confident, the sun shining through the elongated, towering raincoast trees. The bus driving him away from Vancouver all the way up to surf country on the island is a shitty busted up minivan, bumping over gravel roads crossing the Pacific Rim National Park.

It’s nice. Summer is nice, to spend away from the city, away from his parents nagging him about girlfriends and his career and a thousand things that sometimes, sometimes keep Mark up at night when he can’t help himself. Still. Life isn’t too hard, when you’re twenty years old and a little bit lost, but yet the weight of the past and the future isn’t crushing you fully yet on most days.

They say people come to the coast to find themselves, the mythical rainforests, the giant trees, postcard country. It’s a decent place to have a spiritual awakening, perhaps with the help of natural stimulants and psychedelics, as tradition dictates. There are stories, as there should be, of hippie communes where hallucinogenic mushrooms function as currencies, of people losing themselves in the woods and entering in perfect communion with Mother Nature. It’s all very folksy, of course, charming, just like the moss that covers the ground in the rainforest.

It’s not really what Mark is after, though. He likes spending his summers here surfing, has done ever since that white guy he had a painful, awkward crush on middle school had brought him along for a few weeks. It had taken all of Mark’s begging for his immigrant Korean parents to agree, but it had been worth it, the most precious month of Mark’s entire life at the time, it had seemed. 

White Guy’s parents walked barefoot outside and wore shoes in the house, kissed each other in public and owned a sprawling summer house on the beach that was probably worth more money than what Mark’s parents could ever dream to earn in a lifetime. White Guy would laugh whenever Mark got flustered at the luxury around them, the jacuzzi on the patio overlooking the beach, the fancy pasta dishes the adults would have ready for them after a day at the beach, the light touches of their hands when they laid down on the rug of the bedroom they’d shared that summer, listening to vintage vinyls recordings of Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel over the rain.

Nothing had happened, aside from surfing, aside from the sun making Mark’s skin tan and his entire being come alive, the raw taste of sea water and the aches that never lasted too long after a day spent in the ocean. White Guy and his wealthy WASPy parents had faded away over the years, but the rush of adrenaline he felt every time he got on the surfboard had remained, as he’d got a part-time job in high school that paid for his bus ticket, meal and campground here on the peninsula for long enough for him to get his fix. The occasional disapproving stare of his parents hadn’t faded either, but it wasn’t anything Mark couldn’t handle, not when the sun felt so perfect over the coast, and when the Pacific Ocean called from him this way.

The bus stops, arriving at destination. Mark blinks, rips out his headphones, grabbing his parka, his backpack with all of his possessions for the next few months, his board bulky and unwieldy as he gets off the vehicle. The parking lot in the middle of town isn’t too busy, thankfully enough, morning dew clouding the air. It’s a quick look at his phone that tells him where he has to go, and so he walks, salt water drenching the coast, board rumbling under his Vans sneakers in a way that feels like nothing short of freedom.

This is his life, he thinks in a gleeful, bright way, like his heart could burst out of his chest at any time. It’s his life, and there’s nothing he wishes to cherish more than the ephemeral present right now.

  
  
  


"You got your bed and closet here. You can use the main hall bathrooms, the keys are in your set there if you need them. Just make sure you leave everything clean and keep the guests happy."

The owner of the pension looks out of place, with his flashy gaudy suit that somehow still makes Mark feel inadequate in his rain drenched jeans and hoodie. He's got a lazy Chinese accent with a slight tilt to it, and the looks of a hitman working for the mafia. It's the slicked hair and the stern expression. Maybe this guy does work for the mafia. Maybe he is the mafia. Mark can't know, not really.

He nods, meekly, and he doesn't exactly regret accepting the job just yet, which consists of basically just looking over some overpriced luxury tourist rental for what seems like the kind of businessman some of his classmates from that one anthropology class he took at UBC would call a real estate speculator. Mark doesn't have much of an opinion on the topic, aside from mild terror he feels standing next to the guy. The truth is that his parents probably hopes he'll become something like that in the future, minus the organized crime vibes. Nice suits and proper hair and a business degree and a nice car for a proper venture capitalist.

He gets shown around the premises, the driftwood chic decor of the two luxury Instagram-ready spots that are scattered on the beachfront property, the central house with proper kitchens that also doubles as a lounge area. It's a sweet dig, no wonder crazy wealthy foreigners pay stupid fees to stay here when the sea is really, really good. There are surfboards available for the guests, wetsuits and some boat gear. Mark’s got everything already, but he guesses it’s nice, for whoever comes here at some point.

It's no wonder Mark accepted the abysmal pay too, he realises as he feels himself looking at the ocean whenever he gets the chance. The sea is calm for now, but he knows the waves will come soon, when the season hits properly. There's the nagging voice of his mother in the back of his head, about internships and proper jobs and girlfriends, but it's bearable, for the most part.

He's dragged out of his day-dreaming by the stern voice of his new boss, giving him the keys with a look that is, if he's to be honest, kind of terrifying.

"You're mostly here to make sure everything goes alright. Johnny told me I could trust you, I don't want to be mistaken."

Johnny Seo. The guy with the magic connections that got him the job in the first place, who's been in charge of the place every summer for some reason Mark can't quite figure out yet. They'd hooked up over Tinder over the winter and ended up more on the friends than on the benefits side of the spectrum. Johnny's fun, and he’s older and more mature than Mark, with ressources Mark can hardly understand sometimes. Johnny knows all the right clubs to go to, the right way to leech free booze at art shows, and the right tricks to get that kind of not super legit but definitely nice kind of employment deal. Maybe Johnny’s in the mafia. That would make sense.

Johnny might be arriving to the island later over the season, when the town truly turns into a tourist mecca, because Johnny Seo is the kind of guy that glides through life without seemingly caring about anything. He spins Bronski Beat remixes for the monthly 80s night at that underground gay bar Mark went to once and got completely shitfaced to overly sweet drinks to the point Johnny had to take him home and not even screw him once during the night.

For now, though, it's mostly Mark and the elusive, absentee owner, taking care of the empty rental. It’s probably going to be a few quiet weeks he’ll spend here in May, while his nondescript sexual friendship person finishes a nondescript modelling contract he’s got pending back home in Chicago.

They Facetime, a few times, over the first few days he’s got alone here, and Mark isn’t sure how he feels about Johnny still, besides the fact that he’s really hot and that he makes him flustered when he lets him think about it too much. It’s a nice relationship that they have, something that’s hard to put a label on, and perhaps that’s fine, for them not to have a label, really.

  
  


Mark spends the first week there surfing his brains out and loving every second of it. There hasn't been any reservations made for occupancy, and he has his days for himself. He takes the bus to Long Beach with his surfboard tucked under his arm, changes into his wetsuit in the bush, briefly considers bleaching his hair some kind of stupid color to fit the entire deal. He opts against it, both out of despair while looking at the price of hair products in the town's small pharmacy. Besides, there's that nagging voice in the back of his head that tells him that he's not ready to try to be that kind of Twinkie yet.

There's more Red Hot Chilli Peppers, more snacks on tiny hiking trails that litter the small seaside municipality, longboarding to the beach when the ocean is too calm for surfing. When he updates his Instagram with selfies next to the sea, there's a bunch of likes and DM from Lucas, a transfer student he befriended in his Econometry intro class last year, telling him he's a lucky fucker not to be currently interning at some corporate firm populated exclusively with assholes and that he hates him. It makes Mark giggle, like message and send a slew of lewd emojis as retribution.

Mostly, what he does, is just be, really. Mark's always been shy. He knows he could just hit up any hostel up in town owned by hippies that have an open mic every week to play the guitar and make the kind of fleeting summer friends places like this warrant, but he doesn't. He spends it alone, plucks at his plastic baby blue Mahalo, watches Netflix when he comes back to his tiny room, wrapped in blankets.

It's not the first time he comes here, of course, he's been there for at least a weekend every summer since high school, but it's the first time he tells his parents he'll be spending the entire summer there by himself. Mark made sure to forget to tell them that he'd turned down several internship offers just to do that. He doesn't want to upset them too much, not now anyway.

The nights are still fresh, the woods calm, isolation refreshing from spending the year in the city. Still there's this nagging feeling in his stomach whenever he lets himself think too much, about finishing up that business degree his parents want him to get, about settling down and finding a real girlfriend, a real job.

It keeps him awake, one night, twisting and turning, unsure as to what to do out of himself. He drags himself out of bed, bleary, tells himself he'd rather just do something with his insomnia than unsuccessfully attempt to sleep.

Maybe it's karma, maybe it's something else, the stars and the moons aligning, when he checks his phone and sees the notification on the front screen. Guests coming in the next evening, leaving Mark a day to tidy up and make sure everything is set for their arrival.

  
  


Mark, when he'd accepted the job, had had certain expectations as to the type of people who would end up renting a luxury suite in a cabin on the Pacific Northwest. Wealthy celebrities wanting a peaceful and quiet getaway and being divas about what is basically glorified camping. Tech bros coming here to optimise their performance by building a relationship with nature and possibly do drugs that would help preserve their abundance mindset or something.

He had expected good-looking people, knowing perfectly well that beauty was something that totally could be bought, but he hadn't expected these first guests to be this pretty.

They arrive in the evening in a Range Rover that costs more than Mark's entire four-year tuition, and Mark is there to welcome them, a bit fidgety, a bit nervous. They'd exchanged a few text prior, for details of the rental in that business, stern type of way that Mark's become familiar with in business school.

Maybe it's racist of him, but he doesn't expect them to be the kind of fancy F.O.B. Asians everyone blames for hiking up land prizes in Vancouver.

He welcomes them in the parking lot of the property, serving them tea. He's not supposed to be entertaining, he knows, but he feels like he has to anyway. They're guests, afterall. It's about honor, as his mother always said.

The first one, the one that speaks English, had introduced himself with a name Mark can't pronounce, giggling at his coy face and telling him to just call him Ten. He's got an untraceable accent that pegs him somewhere in Southeast Asia, Mark can guess, striking features, dangling earrings and tight black designer clothes that he most obviously did not buy himself.

"He's the one paying for it," Ten says with a grin as he helps Mark take out their luggage from the trunk, chin pointed at the older man in slacks and a dress shirt that's talking in quick, snappy Korean on his phone that Mark can only catch bribes of.

He can't help but to stare, really, because they're both handsome in that very specific, somewhat exotic way that doesn't match with the place they decided to vacation in. They're not bubbly enough to be that very specific type of travel Youtubers that come to the island for aesthetic reasons. Yet, it's also obvious that they're definitely not the kind of people that seem actually into the somewhat masochistic concept of discovering the great outdoors. Camping, as it’s quickly been understood by Mark while growing up in Vancouver, was for white people.

Mark keeps staring without meaning to, as he picks up the last designer bag in front of him. It's because of the smooth skin and trendy haircuts, but also because there's something self-assured in both of their demeanour that makes Mark feel inadequate. He doesn't have the time to ponder more about the reasons behind it, though. The guy who had introduced himself as Ten earlier chuckles at him, smiling yet with something sharp in his gaze as he closes the trunk of the Rover.

"If you're wondering, he's not gay, just, like, Korean," he says with a knowing look. "Skincare and fashion are a really big thing back there."

Mark isn't sure if that's a warning or an observation, but he doesn't get to ask, not really. It's like he doesn't really get to say that he's Korean too, because he is, but he isn't either, not really.

The older man that paid for the rental, Mark comes to learn later after a proper introduction later as he serves them tea and gets to explain the terms of the stay, is named Baekhyun. He's slightly shorter than Mark, smiles amicably as he hears Mark awkwardly try to stitch Korean sentences together, has a firm handshake that doesn't match with his girly hands.

Both guests get settled in their suite, the big one that's upstairs, with a view of the ocean. The most expensive one, too. If anything, Baekhyun isn't cheap, that seems certain. He's also not averse to how Ten seems keen on touching him and whisper things in his ear as they are offered a tour of the area, shooting glances at their host that makes Mark shiver with a weird sense of embarrassment.

"Thank you," he replies in English with a thick Korean accent that remind Mark of his father.

Mark nods meekly, bites his lips, and takes his leave, flustered. He only glances once as he disappears down the stairs, catching only shadows of their silhouettes in the dark.

Maybe it's the shadows, maybe it's Mark's eyes messing up with him. It's probably just a trick of the light with the branches in the dark that play in the light from the window, but it almost looks, from where he's standing, that the two handsome foreign guests are kissing.

  
  


Mark isn't technically obligated to be entertaining the guests but somehow he does it anyway, because he's too easy, probably. Lucas sometimes tells him he really needs to work on it, but that's something Mark brushes off to cultural differences, like how Lucas will never understand the point of western tipping or why Mark sometimes split restaurant bills with his white friends.

He fixes himself breakfast in the main hall, one morning, fumbling with the coffee machine and wincing whenever he thinks about the grocery bill he'll have to send back to the owner. Still, life could be worse, he knows, as he thinks of the morning sun over the ocean, the fresh scent of pine and sand on his way there. Life definitely could be worse.

Maybe he’s slept badly and wants nothing but to nap all day, but life could be worse.

"We were told you know how to surf," a voice calls from behind him, making him jump with a very undignified squeak.

It's one of the guests, the one that speaks English, who somehow looks like a fashion magazine first thing in the morning, apparently. Mark wants to curse, but he doesn't, too intimidated, perhaps, by the way Ten walks towards him with a sorry-not-sorry little grin.

"Didn't mean to scare you, sorry," he chuckles, and presses a hand over Mark's shoulder like they're old friends.

Mark wills himself not to flinch, but it's hard, with the intimidating older brother look Ten has going on despite being so slim and delicate. It's probably the sharp eyes, and the foreign accent, the luxury sugar baby lifestyle that seems to be his natural element, along with the fact that Mark can't help but to think that Ten kind of is a stripper name, now that he thinks of it.

"I, uh, no, it's fine, it's cool," he lies, shaking his head and laughing it off. "But, yeah, I guess I do know how to surf..."

Mark's nervousness is obviously really entertaining to Ten, because his grin isn't unlike a cat's playing with his prey.

"Would you mind showing us how to? I know we can get lessons, but I thought it'd be more fun this way. We'll pay you, obviously."

Mark is too easy, he knows, and he can't say no, he really can't. He says yes, and he gets Ten’s hands on him again, ruffling his hair casually and telling him he’s so sweet. It shouldn’t make him smile, but it does, he can’t help it.

  
  


It happens in a blur, really, loading up his board in the rover while he thinks about how Lucas will probably text him something about, once again, being too easy. There’s Ten on his phone, checking where they could rent boards for the days, sneaking a few winks at Mark, playful.

It's the other one, the older, charismatic, intimidating one, that makes Mark especially nervous, though. There's something about Byun Baekhyun just being there that's making him shifty and self-conscious, like a schoolboy with a crush. It's the effortless Korean that will never sound like his parents yelling at each other and scraping to make ends meet, the smooth skin and artfully placed hair, regular features that might or might not be the product of plastic surgery. He looks like the kind of dutiful, successful son Mark feels he can't be to his parents, never will be, in fact.

He's on the phone again, which seems to be thing for him, Mark realises. He can't catch much of what's going on, something about contracts and getting the job done. Maybe those guys are the mafia. Gay gangsters (Gayngsters?) paying him to show them how to surf in Tofino. It would be funny if Mark wasn't so damn intimidated by them, really.

Byun Baekhyun, it turns out, is just as intimidating when he's not on the phone, sitting in the driver's seat of a luxury car. The sunglasses he's wearing are worth more than the entirety of Mark's electronics, Mark can tell, and he's relaxed through it in a way Mark, who hasn't got a license, can't understand, not really. There's Ten riding shotgun, and Mark's left in the backseat, feeling not unlike he's in a scene from a family roadtrip. Mark's eyes linger on the hands that grip the wheel, white and delicate but firm, still.

"You were born in Canada?" Baekhyun asks in that same laboured English Mark's come to associate with him, eyes on the road.

"Uh, yeah. Toronto. You know Toronto?"

Baekhyun laughs at that, and he's got a sweet kind of laugh, giggly and airy. It makes it harder for Mark to picture him as some sort of ruthless criminal, but he can still do that, a little bit. Ten fiddles with his phone, only perking up slightly as a sign that he's listening to the conversation.

"Yeah. Like Drake." He starts humming, cheeky. " _You used to call me on my cellphone, late night when you need my love._ "

Mark winces, maybe because he can never really divorce the idea of Drake from the reruns of Degrassi: The Next Generation he used to watch as a preteen in the family's living room. Still, he laughs, nods, because he has to, because Byun Baekhyun just has this way of being both terribly intimidating and easy going enough to put anyone at ease with a snap of his fingers. It’s his voice, too. Soft and sweet and sticky like honey.

Ten scoffs, turns to look at Mark.

"The old man here is weak when it comes to big tough-acting brawny guys with a heart of gold," he says with a knowing grin, before Baekhyun brings him to order, snapping something in Korean about respecting his elders.

There’s something else in there that Mark isn’t sure to quite catch, but it’s okay, he thinks. He’s apprehensive, a little bit, because there’s this intangible tension between the two front seat, the way Ten’s fingers brush against the nape of Byun Baekhyun’s neck. Mark’s eyes can’t stop looking, mesmerized, in a way. 

Around the car, the rainforest twirls in a blur, the sun high over their heads.

It's weird, because there's something relaxed about them that Mark can't help but to be jealous of. It's obvious that there's a most obvious financial component to their relationship, as Byun Baekhyun slips generously stacked twenty dollar bills to Mark for a little twenty minutes of explanations over the wet sand. 

Yet... Yet they seem to make it work, without putting a name to it. Mark can't help but to think about Johnny, and quickly chases the thought away, not wanting to give himself a headache.

It's a beautiful day, it really is. Ten picks up the proper way to use a board quickly, grinning and laughing in the waves. It's a sweet sight, as Mark notices the way Byun Baekhyun, who's sitting on the surfboard taking a break, looks at Ten. There's something subtle about it, caring in a way Mark can't help but to think is both endearing and heartbreaking. He doesn't get to dwell upon it too much, yet.

They get back to the car exhausted in the late afternoon, and Mark catches it, in the corner of his eye, the fleeting touch of Byun Baekhyun's hand on Ten's naked shoulder once they're out of their wetsuits.

The sun is bright, that day, sets nicely over the horizon and the ocean is kind, waves not too harsh, still. Mark's feeling the breeze like a breath of freedom over his skin, damp towel folded to the side. He’s made himself a little fire on the beach, plucking at his guitar, looking at the sky. The guests are back at their quarters, and he can relax a little bit, he figures.

He’s counted the fat stack of twenty dollar bills given to him by Byun Baekhyun earlier in the room he’s got tucked away in the pension, like he wants to hide. Maybe he does. It’s just money but there’s this unsaid sense of shame in his gut about it.

Maybe it’s because they’re hot. Lucas, when they Facetimed earlier, had said that is was definitely because they’re hot, and also because Mark is an idiot.

" _It’s always about the daddy issues,_ " Lucas had said, because Lucas is a prick and he doesn’t give a shit. " _Like that huge crush you have on the Korean guy you’re fucking who got you the job here._ "

Mark had squeaked, because he doesn’t have a crush on Johnny Seo, that’s ridiculous, and also because Mark squeaks a lot, in general.

He’s not sure if Lucas’ right, though. It might be because of the daddy issues, but Mark’s pretty sure that the fucking he’s heard from the two guests the night before has something to do with it too. It’s not like he’d meant to eavesdrop, but it had happened still, because Mark couldn’t help but to listen like and idiot, first thinking there was some sort of health situation happening that he might need to take care of.

There hadn’t been, at least not anything Mark’s needed to use his rudimentary rusty First Aid training for. There had been, however, small suspicious bruises on Ten’s neck all day, bruises Mark hadn’t been able to look away from, fleeting touches between the two of them that Mark feels like a creep for noticing.

  
  


"What's so weird about it?" Johnny's voice comes from his laptop speaker as Mark's shoving cereal into his face as a late night snack later that night. "From what I get, it's just a classic foreign closeted sugar daddy situation. Nothing to worry about, really."

They've been Facetiming over the past few weeks, because Mark's been lonely and Johnny's been surprisingly available. He says it's because he doesn't care for sightseeing, being in his hometown and everything, supplementing his income with the odd night shift at an underground gay bar Mark knows he's too uncool to even think about going to. It's frustrating. Everything about Johnny Seo is frustrating, because Johnny Seo is both super hot and the worst kind of detached cool Mark knows he'll never manage to be himself.

Mark, in the back of his mind, should have figured out that this would be Johnny evaluation of the entire thing, because Johnny doesn't give a shit, basically. Still, he'd like a bit more support and understanding, but at the same time, he can't really expect Johnny to give him that. They're friends. It's not like if they were dating or anything.

"I guess it's just unsettling because they're both so hot," Mark laments, forced to be honest with himself, really.

Johnny does that to him, make him self-aware to a point that's bound to be painful at times. Maybe Mark's got a bit of a crush on him. He looks handsome, even on the grainy webcam feed, with his hair still wet from the shower, hanging out in what Mark guesses is his childhood bedroom. Mark wonders what kind of kid Johnny was, sometimes, from the bribes of conversations they've had over the past few months, and it never fails to make him feel, a little bit, like a creep. He knows he was a diligent student, played sports surrounded by white people in a Chicago suburb, and had this rounded all-American childhood Mark envies at times, with his parents that hardly spoke any English growing up and worked day in and day out to provide for them.

"Yeah, I mean, I'd love to have a hot Korean daddy that reminds me of my actual dad to fuck me on a beach in by the ocean," Johnny states like he's talking about the weather. "He'd pay for the surgeries my mom's friends keep saying I need because I'm not successful enough for Korean diaspora standards. Dream come true."

Mark snorts, and the almond milk from his cereal bowl goes up his nose, making him choke inelegantly.

"Not what I mean, just like... It's unnerving."

Johnny shrugs. Of course he's unphased. He's Johnny Seo, the guy that scores himself modelling contracts without even caring about it and had Mark completely and utterly wrapped around his finger without even realizing it. It’s not fair. Nothing is fair when it comes to Johnny Seo.

"I think you're just bored and hungry for drama, man. Worst thing that could happen is that you score yourself a threesome, and how hot would that be, uh?"

Mark winces. It hurts because it's not entirely false.

"I keep hearing them fuck at night, it's so bad, I swear," he says, and it makes Johnny laughs the most gorgeous kind of open-hearted laugh, the one that makes Mark melt a little bit.

He really is truly fucked, now.

  
  


It's funny to think Mark, beyond the fact that he loves surfing and the expansive sense of joyful freedom being on the island gives him, hasn't really ever dabbled much in drugs. It's something about his upbringing, maybe, and the expensive private schooling his immigrant parents saved up for him to get. There was always this weird sense of guilt whenever he ended up being offered weed as a teenager, and he hadn't really hung out with the right crowd for it anyway.

It shouldn't surprise him, really, when he's sitting on the beach with the night sky over their heads and a driftwood fire crackling on the wet sand and Ten starts rolling a joint with those wiry, spidery fingers that he can hardly ever keep for himself.

They’ve been spending more time together, during the last week. No one else has come to the rental, so it’s been just them and the sea, more fat stacks of bills that Mark accepts with a blush and flustered, mumbled thanks. Byun Baekhyun insists on being called Baekhyun, just Baekhyun, smokes cigarettes in the morning and hums smooth RnB songs while he makes coffee in the morning. He’s funny, too, cracks jokes like a sitcom dad, really, albeit one with an impeccable knowledge of top forty pop music and internet memes. It’s unsettling but endearing, making Mark fall, hard, the way he falls for anyone, really.

There’s also more instances of hearing the faint sounds of lovemaking in the quiet forest at night, Mark trying his very best not to think about it too much either. It’s chill. Mark is chill. Everything is chill.

" _You play the guitar, right?_ " Baekhyun asks in slow Korean, pointedly ignoring Ten's shuffling with the rolling paper. " _I heard you a few days ago._ "

Mark blushes, from the few beers they've been sharing on the beach or from self-consciousness, he doesn't know.

" _Yeah, a little bit,_ " he replies, stumbling on his words, before giving up and switching to English. "You play music too?"

Ten hums at this, lighting up his blunt in a way that’s definitely practiced. It’s nice, relaxing, he figures, as relaxing as hanging out with handsome foreign intimidating older men can be. They chat, idly, about music, about the waves, about how Baekhyun is still awful at surfing with Mark telling him it’s fine, he’ll get better with time.

"Mister Byun sings like an angel," Ten says at some point, something hazy in his voice, from the weed or something else, he isn’t sure. "It’s a shame he ended up in a business that’s all about crushing artistic dreams."

Mark raises an eyebrow. They’ve never really discussed what Baekhyun does as a living, out of a strange sense of discomfort Mark doesn’t feel like he has the right to fully examine.

"I work in entertainment," Baekhyun explains curtly, as if to change topic. There’s something antsy about his demeanour, the slight arch of his eyebrows.

Ten doesn’t let him get away with it, it seems.

" _Big brother_ works in entertainment, picking hopeful young boys and shaping them into idol superstars," he grins, something sharp and cutting in his cat-like smile. “A maker of dreams. The very best.”

Ten hands Baekhyun the joint, and Baekhyun takes it, even though he doesn’t move to take a hit from it, looks at Ten with a sharp look. They’re speaking English with each other for Mark’s sake, but they’re still not speaking a language Mark fully understands

"Wanna shotgun it?" Ten asks with a grin that makes the warm sand they’re sitting on feel like thin crackling ice. “I’ll do it with Mark if you don’t, _big brother_.”

Baekhyun declines, a wave, something sharp in his overall demeanour. There’s something hurt in the gesture, too, something that’s not exactly there. It feels rehearsed, like this happened before. Then, Ten shoots Mark a glance, beckons him closer in a way that makes Mark feels like a trapped prey. He is just that, in a lots of ways, he realizes. Still, he does let Ten do as he likes, let him lean closer to him.

Ten is tiny and delicate the way a teenager is, even though it’s obvious that he’s much more mature than his appearance lets on. Both of his wiry arms are trapping Mark in place, a little bit, and he’s smiling still, fingers pressing against Mark’s lips as he angles him properly for them to share the remaining stub of the blunt.

Their lips brush when Ten leans down to breathe smoke into his lungs, and he’s got pretty features and dark eyelashes up close. There’s this bitter taste that’s heady and foggy filling his mouth and his lungs, and Mark isn’t sure if it’s from the weed or from the heavy gazes on him with the promises of something more. He can feel Baekhyun’s gaze on them and it’s making him on edge, just like Ten’s hand on his forearm, on his chin. 

It makes Mark choke when they pull away after what feels like an entire decade. Ten laughs at him, because it’s Ten, and he’s charming and sweet even when he’s openly mocking him.

“I’m sorry, is this your first time smoking weed?” Ten asks, still grinning, and Mark nods awkwardly, only eliciting more laughter from him.

There’s still some tension hanging on, but Mark eases himself into it, into the way Ten blows smoke into his lungs and into the way Baekhyun watches them, something unreadable in his features. When Ten’s lips remain a bit too long against Mark’s lips, Mark closes his eyes, lets himself go, a little bit.

It’s pornographic, even though it shouldn’t be.

It doesn’t go further than that, smoky kisses and Ten’s caressing touches, babbling about surfing and the island, spilling into confessions that Mark really should know better than to let out to visitors that are renting rooms in the pension he’s supposed to be looking over.

“ _You remind me of my dad, you know that?_ ” he slurs in Korean, his head against Baekhyun’s thigh while Ten plays with his hair slowly. “ _Like I’ll never be quite enough to impress you._ ”

It makes Baekhyun chuckles, and he hasn’t been smoking with them as far as Mark is aware, letting out a small sigh as he turns to Ten, says that it’s getting late, that they should all head back to the pension. Mark can only let them take him back to his room, let Ten kiss his forehead with a giggle and Baekhyun only look at him with those sad, sad eyes Mark can’t quite decipher yet.

  
  


Mark feels like he wants to crawl out of his own skin in embarrassment when he sees the two guests the next morning. Baekhyun’s brewing coffee with a cigarette behind his ear, and Ten’s leafing through a fashion magazine while stretching next to the window. The sun shines on the both of them softly, bathing them in warm morning light.

It’s true, what he said to Johnny, about them being so hot. It renders Mark basically powerless, really, as he briefly considers going back to bed just to avoid the non morning after situation. He doesn’t get the chance to do that, because Ten looks up and smiles at him, bright and sunny, charming and expensive, like everything about Ten is.

They don’t end up talking about it, or about anything of consequences, really. It’s better like that, Baekhyun offering to drive Mark to the beach while Ten mentions wanting to have a little yoga session by himself in the morning. Mark should be smarter than to agree, but he isn’t, not really.

It’s different without Ten in the car, with just him and Baekhyun and the radio playing between them. Baekhyun’s got this confidence going on when he drives, eyes on the road, looking so much like the adult Mark wishes he could be, at times.

“You’re back to university after the summer, yeah?” Baekhyun says suddenly, making Mark jump a little bit.

It’s probably because the moment seemed too peaceful, almost. Mark should be back to UBC after the summer, he guesses, with the same kind of uneasiness he guesses he should start thinking about getting a driver’s license at some point, and figure out his career and his life and everything else.

“Yeah!” Mark replies a bit too suddenly. “I mean, yeah. I guess I should.”

Baekhyun laughs at that, airy and musical, pretty in a way a guy who’s past thirty really shouldn’t be.

“ _You don’t sound so sure,_ ” Baekhyun points out in Korean. “ _It’s okay. I mean, you can tell me if you don’t want to. I’m not your dad; I won’t judge._ ”

Mark makes a face that he finds himself hiding with his hands, embarrassed, both because he remembers perfectly what happened last night and obviously Baekhyun does, too. It’s also because it’s true that he doesn’t really want to head back to class, to get that business degree he just feels he should be getting, to get ahead on a life that feels so disconnected with what he feels inside.

“ _I don’t know,_ ” Mark admits quietly. “ _It’s silly, sorry._ It’s just that most of the time I just feel like I have no idea about what I’m doing, you know? Like I’m going through the motions and I just… _Nevermind. It’s really silly._ ”

Baekhyun shakes his head, and there’s a hint of a smile to his lips still. Mark’s gaze zeroes on the slight shine on Baekhyun’s lower lip, the self-assurance in the curve of his eyebrow. Mark doesn’t know, in that precise moment, if this is about him wanting to be Byun Baekhyun or about him wanting to be with Byun Baekhyun. Maybe it’s a bit of both, really.

“ _How you feel isn’t silly. It’s normal._ ” Baekhyun pauses, makes a concentrated face, searching for words, maybe. “How do you say? Growing pains.”

Mark nods. Outside, the rainforest passes them by, green and lush and open, the Pacific ocean wide and open on the shore. Mark knows he’ll have to get back to Vancouver sooner or later, but for now this is nice, smoking weed on the coast with handsome strangers, surfing his brains out and trying to run away from himself and from the inevitable state of adulthood that awaits him.

“Growing pains, yeah...” he repeats, looking out the window.

Mark doesn’t jump, not too much anyway, when he feels Baekhyun’s hand on his shoulder. It’s comforting, grounding. It shouldn’t be, and it’s frustrating because Baekhyun is right, most likely, in that almost paternal way that makes Mark’s skin itch in all the wrong ways. Lucas is right, has to be, really, about the daddy issues and everything else.

It doesn’t go further than that, because Mark is stupid but he’s not that stupid, really. Still, he wants to lean into it, the same way he lets Johnny play with his hair when they’re done fucking and both scrolling through their phone, showing each other memes and Mark tries not to have this irresistible urge in his gut to say something very, very stupid.

  
  


It’s comfortable, to swing back and forth between attraction and mild terror between Ten and Baekhyun, for awhile. There’s more casual touching but thankfully no more weed shotgunning on the beach, Ten laughing it off like he laughs everything off.

Mark's fiddling with his phone in one of the common areas, Ten doing the same on the couch in front of him, when it happens. Baekhyun went out to pick out dinner, and there's a weird unsaid feeling in Mark's gut that he shouldn't be so cosy with the guests like that but he can't stop himself, not really. It's because they're both so hot, he tells himself honestly now, mirrors of a world he feels like he both wishes he was a part of and knows would probably consume him from the inside out if he actually did.

There's a cat-like stretch from Ten, a sigh as he lets himself bonelessly lay over the couch. He's delicate and pretty the way someone who's paid by rich men to be just so should be, Mark figures.

"Would you fuck Baekhyun if you could?" Ten asks casually, like they're talking about the weather.

Mark chokes.

"... What?"

Ten turns to him, perfectly plucked eyebrow raised in a definitely judgemental expression. It makes Mark gulp, bite his lips, wanting to hide his face, really. Mark finds himself unable to lie, not really, not to Ten.

"I just... He's really handsome. But I don't want to make things messy or anything?"

Ten rolls his eyes.

"I'm not being a territorial bitch, Mark. I just feel like you should know what you're getting into if you plan on actually doing it. You know there's usually a reason why handsome music execs would rather have a paid boy like me instead of a real relationship."

Mark can only blink at Ten's statement, unsure as to what to say about it, as to how to react. Has he been so obvious? Probably. Still, it's almost too easy the way Ten talks about it, transactional in a way Mark isn't sure he quite feels about both Ten himself and the handsome music exec with issues he's dating for money.

He doesn't get to reply anything to Ten at that moment, though, because there's the sound of the front door opening, making Ten jump to his feet and give a knowing look to Mark before heading for the entrance. From his still surprised spot on the couch, Mark can hear them speak softly in Korean to each other, the pause of a kiss on the lips they've been careful not to let Mark see over their time here.

It stays with him, that evening, as they pick on candied Pacific smoked salmon Baekhyun picked up, Ten shooting him a few glances that make Mark tense, thinking over the meaning of it all, of handsome music execs

That night, when Mark's laying in bed with his gaze on the ceiling, he tries not to let Ten's words spin endlessly in his mind, fails miserably. Lucas or, God forbid, Johnny, would probably tell him that he's being a drama-seeking bitch again, but he can't help it, can't help but to eavesdrop even now, not bothering with earplugs when he hears soft, tell tale brushing sounds from the two bodies sharing a bed upstairs.

  
  


It's Ten's idea, because of course it is, for then to go out in town, one of those open mics in a hippie bar full of white people looking for their inner truth in an overcrowded, overpriced surfing mecca at peak tourist season. From Ten's words, it's just because he's dying to hear Mark play the guitar, but Mark can feel that there's something else in his sweet gestures and meaningful glances at Baekhyun.

Mark follows the waves that move and crash between the two of them, because he hardly can do anything else. It's because there's a part of him that loves this, loves the way Ten insists on applying light makeup to his face like they're going to a nightclub and not some crusty dive bar, loves the way Baekhyun props himself on the driver's seat and starts the engine with that self-assured look that makes Mark wonders if he makes love to his paid boys with the same confidence.

He does want to play the guitar for Ten, but not after they've both had some weed Ten seemingly produces out of thin air, along with overpriced beers Baekhyun buys them but doesn't drink himself, even when Ten furtively presses alcohol moist lips on his own, then turns to drape himself over Mark, giggly and floaty and so, so, so gorgeous.

" _Big brother_ doesn't party anymore. It messes up with his medication," he slurs into Mark's ear at some point. "I don't mind. He's hot when he's all stern and serious and in control. Although… Well. He’s something else when he’s _out of control_ too.”

Mark can only awkwardly shift at those words, but it’s all kind of blurry, a little bit, soft and cushy. The lights are dimmed and the ocean looks nice outside, gorgeous and black and terrifying. There are ugly knicknacks everywhere, handmade jewelry on some white girl’s dreadlocks that just finished reading frankly terrible spoken-word poetry while accompanying herself on the ukulele. He gets on the makeshift stage like in a dream, hands trembling.

“I, uh,” he stumbles upon his words, but still picks up the guitar. “This is really wack I guess but, uh, anyway, here’s Wonderwall.”

He’s terrible at playing in front of people, he really is, stumbling upon his words until there’s someone else coming up to him, pressing a pretty hand on his shoulder. Ten wasn’t lying. Byun Baekhyun, for all the self-assured thirty-something year old sugar daddy vibes, has the voice of an actual angel, making sad white boys ballads sound like heaven and hell at the same time.

Mark is so fucked. He looks at Baekhyun, at the loose sweater he’s wearing, handsome features. He’s so, so, so fucked.

When they finish the song, Ten loudly claps for them, like they’re a rock duo, and it makes Baekhyun laugh, a little bit. Mark looks at Baekhyun, unsure as to how to feel about, about Baekhyun’s dewy skin and the way he sits back next to Ten, wraps an arm around his shoulder, gives him an indulgent smile that makes something inside of Mark boil.

It doesn’t last, though. It’s easy to slip into easy conversations with strangers when everyone’s a foreigner in some way, and Ten shines like the sun. There’s a handsome guy that places his hand on Ten’s hip, another that briefly toys with Ten’s short hair, and Ten just looks at Mark as he lets everything happen. It should infuriate Mark, but he’d be a hypocrite for it, with Baekhyun’s hand, he knows, feeling to hot and so close to his own hip.

There are more beers and more weed and more unbearably sober Baekhyun just hanging in there while Mark melts against him like a popsicle, to the point that he has to be taken home, really.

And he is. He is taken home. Closing time comes and the sea seemingly roars as he stumbles on the gravel road on the way to Baekhyun’s renter rover, holding onto the older man, the two of them alone.

“Shouldn’t we find Ten first?” he mumbles, half-heartedly.

Baekhyun shakes his head, and he’s so old, so mature, so distant still, like an idealized version of a person Mark can just stick all of his fears about the past and the future and the nigh unbearable terror that they invoke in him at times like post-its on a whiteboard. 

“He’ll text me tomorrow when he wants me to pick him up,” Baekhyun says with a shrug, looking at Mark with an indulgent look.

They drive home, and Baekhyun lets Mark jokingly put on Oasis on the sound system, like he’s a kid, because Mark is just that to Baekhyun, in many ways, it’s obvious.

Mark wants to kiss him, it’s so bad. It’s so bad that he does, messy and drunk and floaty and moaning in a way that is nowhere near as pretty as Baekhyun’s singing and the way it just mixes perfectly with cheap chords and Mark’s complete inability to keep himself in check when it comes to older men who definitely have commitment issues.

It’s so good. Maybe Mark’s fucked up and doing something completely wack. He most definitely is, and Baekhyun kisses back, but he pulls away still, eyes Mark with that same tired look he’s served him last time he saw Mark this wasted, shakes his head in the same way that just reminds Mark of his dad, really.

“You’re drunk,” Baekhyun says, quiet and composed and sober. Mark wants to cry.

He doesn’t cry, though, lets himself be tucked into bed, and when he pulls Baekhyun close with a needy groan, _please please please just stay with me, we don’t have to fuck, just stay, c’mon_ , Baekhyun does. They fall asleep like that, Mark holding Baekhyun’s hand, blissfully, dreamless sleep away from the mild terror that crawls under his skin whenever he thinks about coming back home and finally, maybe, finally telling his parents he’s dropping out of business school to do something that might make him feel real. He doesn’t hear Baekhyun getting up, tiptoeing to the bathroom, popping up a pill bottle with his daily prescription, but not without giving himself a long, cold hard look in the mirror.

The truth, what Mark, who’s passed out in his bed, doesn’t know, it that Byun Baekhyun is just as lost as he is, in a way.

*


	2. Chapter 2

# Baekhyun

“Remind me again why you decided to take a trip to Canada?”

Baekhyun chuckles, sunglasses over his nose, phone on the speaker mode as he’s driving back to pick up Ten from one of the coffee shops in town not too far from the bar they went to. Neutral ground, he figures. It’s a Ten thing.

There’s a cigarette behind his ear he forgot to light up. Oasis was still playing when he started the engine, leaving a strange taste in his mouth.

He can’t help but to think about similar drives between Bucheon and Seoul. It’s always weird to come back home, but he’s good at it, at playing the diligent son, play with his nieces and nephews, with the family dog. There’s food, Mom chiding him about eating like a bird, about how he needs to take care of himself better, and Baekhyun can only smile charmingly and joke about it. Baekbom catches it, something tired in the look he shoots Baekhyun, but it’s fine, it’s all fine, really.

Mom still asks about girlfriends, but Baekhyun tunes it out. Dad doesn’t ask about anything. It’s always been crystal clear between them, from day one, really. Baekhyun’s always been delicate, even though he’d attempted to fake it at time, playing sports he didn’t care about, hiding his secret crush on Rain whenever the singer would come on the tiny fifteen inches television of the cramped living room they used to have. 

Other times. Economic miracles, he figures, like winning the lottery. He bought a decent house for them with the money he’s made in Seoul, got them settled, like distorted kind of resentful apology.

Baekhyun guesses it’s because of the money, really. Money buys a lot of things, especially silence, he’s found out, being the diligent son and managing to become the insurance of a comfortable retirement for his old man. He’s okay with it. On his way to his office, he passes aging ladies with broken backs selling fruits in the streets sometimes, thinks about what it means in the wider scheme of things, thinks about his mother doing the same thing, maybe, in another life.

Baekhyun knows better than to let himself go down that train of thought, though. They’ve talked about it with his doctor, and Baekhyun, if anything, sticks to the plan because there’s no way he’s actually going back to therapy, never, ever.

“Yeah. Ten wanted to go. He said he’s heard about it in a song, and I wanted to surprise him.”

There’s a hum on the other side of the line, some shuffling. Baekhyun vaguely remembers Jongin’s girlfriend from the last time they’ve seen each other, just as feminine, just as pretty as Jongin herself.

"I like Ten," Jongin adds. "He's sweet. I'm glad you're going somewhere with him. It's good for you."

What she really means is that she's happy this isn't looking like the other type of vacation Baekhyun used to take, which mostly involved 'business meetings' with producers in LA and doing way too much cocaine. It’s fair. It’s not like he hasn’t earned her slight distrust anyway. 

Jongin's voice is soft as she speaks to him, but there's something sharper in the way she talks when she's worried he's purposefully hurting himself. There's none of that now, and so Baekhyun can take it easy, or so he hopes.

He thinks about talking to her about what happened earlier, about Mark Lee and how his stomach twists into uncomfortable knots whenever he lets himself think about it too much. Jongin’s always been easy to talk to, sweet and soft, even back when they were doing their military service together, fresh from high school and pushing the pretend game for two more years before being allowed back into the world.

“You’re distracted, _oppa_ ,” Jongin chides him, playful. “I’d say it’s because of your lover getaway, but I know Ten cares too much about you to let your fall in love with him. What’s the matter?”

Baekhyun winces. 

“Nothing, I’m just driving. I just wanted to check up on you, that’s it. I’ll call you when I’m back in Seoul, alright?”

There’s a pause because Jongin isn’t stupid, far too perceptive for her own good, really, but she does tell him sweet goodbyes and promises to meet once Baekhyun can safely bury himself back into work, back into shaping hopeful young souls into pop superstars the way he knows, the industry knows, works best.

  
  


Ten is pretty even in the morning, because it’s Ten and Ten can make hangover and walk of shame hair look fabulous without even trying. There’s a reason why he’s majoring in design, after all, with a keen eye for details and near perfect mastery of aestheticism when it comes to lifestyle. 

He’s sitting near the window, smiles and gets up when Baekhyun comes in, kisses both of his cheeks. He still smells a little bit like stale beer, but he’s brushed his teeth, washed his face, made up his face.

“Hey,” he says, accent foreign and cute on his lips when he speaks Korean. “I got you your order already. Those creamy cappuccinos that are crazy expensive in Korea. I’m sure you had a long night.”

There’s a wink and a slight nudge, because Ten’s smarter than to fall in love with Baekhyun, or to let Baekhyun fall in love with him. What they have is nice, uncomplicated, free. Maybe Jongin’s right. Maybe this is exactly what Baekhyun needs.

They share coffee in cardboard takeout cups over the pier. The temperature’s just right, humidity not quite oppressing, but not quite chilling either. There’s the heavy scent of the sea in the air, a scent Baekhyun fills his lungs with. Ten was right about this place being gorgeous, from the Instagram he’s showed Baekhyun after they’d fuck in Baekhyun’s condo back home, scrawny body pressing itself against Baekhyun’s, hot breath against his neck, short hair tickling his cheek.

Ten’s like this right now, too, eyes closed, humming as they sit together.

Baekhyun knows this is all liminal space, a dream sequence that will inevitably end. There’s no rest for the wicked, even in vacations that aren’t synonym with drug-fuelled club-hopping, downing drinks and feeling invincible in the most intoxicating way only show business manages to make him feel.

Still, he knows better than to fuck drunken teenagers begging him to do so, now.

“You’re doing that frowny music executive face again,” he says, pointedly pressing a thumb between Baekhyun’s eyebrows as if to massage it out of his face. “Stop it.”

Baekhyun chuckles.

“Can’t help it, I guess.”

Ten does that thing, where he lets out a small sigh and grins, too pretty, to sweet for Baekhyun, really, who only likes to pick broken little young things to try to fix to make himself feel better.

“You didn’t sleep with Mark, did you?” Ten observes, and there’s something like surprise in his tone, like he’s impressed.

“I’m ten years older than him and he was intoxicated, Ten. I’m a lot of things, but a statutory rapist is not one of them,” Baekhyun says, and he’s detached about it, more than he wishes he was, really.

It pisses off Baekhyun the same way Ten pisses off Baekhyun by reminding him that they’re not like that with each other, that this is a transaction, because it is, really. It’s also the healthy thing to do, considering how Baekhyun’s other similarly interested relationships ended up the moment they started crossing those kind of boundaries. Still, Ten is good at this, at softening up at Baekhyun’s words, smiling and looking away. His hand presses onto Baekhyun’s hand, and he apologizes with a small voice and small gestures.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Ten says softly, pressing a kiss on Baekhyun’s cheek, eyes closed. “It just seems to me like he wants you, and that he could be good for you, you know?”

Baekhyun sighs, but he lets Ten kiss and touch him, mainly because he can see where Ten’s coming from, really. Baekhyun’s scared, he knows, the same way Mark candidly admits he’s scared with the kind of youthful ignorance that reminds Baekhyun far too much of himself. Maybe that’s what it’s about, really, and with this he lets Ten play with his hair, lead him to the seafront, taking off his shoes, feeling the sand between his toes.

Ten is pretty, his hands are soft, the sky is blue and gorgeous.

That night, they both stumble into bed late, after walking around the gorgeous forests, kissing under the towering fir trees, Ten smiling and laughing at Baekhyun’s jokes, leaning against him as he tells him with pretty, simple yet poetic words about home back in Thailand, about music and about dance, the shows he’s got waiting for him when they get back to Korea. Baekhyun can only drink his kisses, get drunk on them, lose himself.

It’s good because Ten is so, so, so good, with his hands and with his mouth, despite the fact that Baekhyun can’t will his dick to work properly sometimes, even if his brain really, really wants this. 

The bed shifts as Ten straddles his hips, presses against him, groans. Baekhyun can feel his hard-on through the designer jeans Baekhyun bought him when they went to Japan when Baekhyun was overseeing the promotions of that girl group they debuted there a few months ago. Baekhyun, with his self-centered vanity about his delicate features and lean body that still remains despite everything, can’t help but to hate how old that makes him feel.

“Shit... You fuck me instead?” he curses, pulling Ten into a kiss, and it makes Ten laugh, a little bit.

“Sure,” Ten hums in reply, hair messy over his forehead, pointed nose wrinkling a little bit, handsome and irresistible.

Ten’s gracious about it, because Baekhyun’s pretty much paying him for it at this point, but also because Ten is kind. He kisses the side of Baekhyun’s lips like he loves him, warms the lube between his palms, fingers Baekhyun slowly, taking his time, his own erection brushing against Baekhyun’s thigh. There are hushed breath and ever more hushed kisses, and it’s good. 

It’s not good the way Baekhyun’s crazed brain used to crave sex like a good hit, like winning a game he was so good at in club stalls and back rooms, everything so bright and so loud and so glimmering and so, so, so perfect.

It’s humiliating enough for Baekhyun to have, at several instances in the past, gone off his prescription against doctor’s orders, but then if Baekhyun had been a model patient, he would have left his job and taken up meditation and hopefully checked himself in an asylum at some point to cure himself of his terminal case the gays properly, he guesses. The first time they’d put him on the crazy pills, he’d been so embarrassed he’d let the guy he’d picked up at a bar after two weeks on the dose just fuck his face until he gagged just as an excuse to keep his pants on during the encounter, only to promptly discontinue use and spend an entire week unable to sleep. 

He’s not proud of it now, but he’s better now, at least that’s what his calls with Jongin and his nights with Ten like this make him think. It’s good when Ten fucks him, it feels a bit like redemption, perhaps, like the waves over the ocean outside, like long walks on the beach and hopeful young adults playing the guitar badly and having that freshness about them that can only come from not being properly crushed by the world just yet.

  
  


The next few days are awkward, but it's fine, Baekhyun figures. Mark avoids both him and Ten with that guilty look that really doesn't suit him, disappearing in the early morning to surf and only reappearing after sunset.

Baekhyun, on the plane bringing them to Tofino, had read about capricious raincoast weather, only to be pleasantly surprised by the mostly sunny days they’d had so far. There had been something romantic about the idea of walking in the rain with Ten, about clouds rolling down mountains and bringing the rain down with them. It’s not romance between them, not at all, but it’s fun to pretend, when Baekhyun allows himself to, a little bit.

Baekhyun guesses he should feel bad about it, the mess with that sweet boy who’s in charge of the pension they’re staying at, but he doesn't, not really. He's glad he can look at the sea for hours, smoke cigarettes, half-heartedly flip through paper magazines and watch Ten stretch a few impressive yoga poses in the morning without feeling awkward about it. He's glad he didn't ruin Mark by sleeping with him that night.

"You're thinking about him again," Ten observes with a laugh, because Ten really is too perceptive for his own good.

They're on that private beach again, watching the waves. Ten's good at draping himself over Baekhyun like he belongs there. Maybe he does, if truth is to be admitted between them. Baekhyun shakes his head.

"Professional bad habit. You said it yourself. It's my job to pluck out hopeful young artists and shape them into corporate pop stars."

Ten makes a face at Baekhyun’s statement, sighs, almost like he feels bad about it. Maybe he does. It’s been a weird week. Maybe Baekhyun’s not the only one with Mark on his mind.

“Maybe, but you could see him some other way if you wanted to,” Ten replies softly. “I meant it when I said he could be good for you, I really did. He’s sweet, and you could be good for him too.”

He takes Baekhyun’s face into his palm, and Baekhyun leans into the touch, because it’s good, because he can’t help himself, really. It’s not about that overgrown teenager with a crush Baekhyun can only hope is fleeting that they’re talking about. It’s about Baekhyun, about midnight phone calls and emergency rooms and press releases hastily written on a smartphone in a globalized music industry.

“You can allow yourself that, if you want, Baekhyun,” Ten says softly against his lips. “Something simple and easy. I know you could.”

It’s good, because it’s Ten, and Ten is so, so, so good. Perhaps too good for Baekhyun, in a way, because he won’t let him fall in love with him, won’t let him turn him into a work of art the way Baekhyun turns pretty little things like Ten into works of art in his day job.

Ten won’t let Baekhyun turn him into another project, into a living, breathing fantasy, until he’s not breathing anymore, texting furiously, drunk, drunk, drunk, _tell me i did enough, tell me i did well, please_ right before radio silence. Ten pulls him into a kiss, briefly, smiles through it, like forgiveness Baekhyun hasn’t earned. He takes it still, greedily, because it’s Ten, and Baekhyun takes anything Ten gives him without questions these days.

Maybe he can do that. Maybe he can allow himself something like Mark, in this place that feels so removed from real life, like a green, beachfront purgatory at the end of the world.

  
  


It's endearing, how jumpy Mark is, Baekhyun thinks when he comes into the kitchen, stands there and waits for the other to see him at last. There's something of an overly eager puppy in his entire being that Baekhyun's come to enjoy during their time together. He misses it. He wants to make things right, even if this is pretty much Ten's idea, if he's to be perfectly honest with himself.

Mark does that, jumps, giving out a high pitched yelp in the process, then pressing a hand over his chest as he exhales shakily through awkward laughter.

"I... I'm sorry... I didn't see you..." he fumbles with his words, making Baekhyun smile.

Mark is adorable. It's unfair, really, and Baekhyun does feel like a creep for looking at him like that, because of the years between them and everything else, too. He's only got a few more days in Tofino before going back to Korea, but this feels like the right thing to do.

That's something Baekhyun's supposed to implement anyway, now. Doing the right thing.

"It's okay. Sorry for scaring you. I guess I just wanted to talk to you, if that's okay?"

Mark gulps, visibly uncomfortable, but he nods, hair messy from sleep still. Precious in the way hopeful kids getting ready to be turned into superstars should be, but Baekhyun isn't back in Seoul just yet, so he can push it aside, can try to shut down his own mind from spinning in circles, crashing in the wrong direction.

"I, uh... If it's about the night I got drunk, I... I mean, I get it. I just... I can take rejection, you know?"

Baekhyun makes a face. That’s not what he meant to make Mark feel, but he supposes it’s better than telling the truth, in a way. He goes with it, easily, because that’s what makes sense.

"It's fine," he says. "I was just worried. You were intoxicated and I wasn't sure if you were fully conscious of what was happening. I feel like I should apologize too."

Baekhyun’s good with words, as he says he didn’t meant to hurt Mark’s feelings, that he hopes they can be good to each other, not quite turning him down but not quite letting him in either. It’s his job to be diplomatic, and Baekhyun’s nothing if not good at his job.

It’s true, really, that he wants to apologize, although perhaps not for the right reasons, or to the right person. Still, it makes Mark smile as he does, so Baekhyun’s satisfied, a little bit, as Mark does that shifty awkward smile, chuckles. Words fall out of his mouth too quickly, like they just have to, sometimes without much sense to them, and it’s adorable. 

It’s annoying how he can’t turn it off, sometimes, work and how it makes him think. In another life, maybe, Baekhyun would have picked him up in the streets of Vancouver to turn him into a made up, well-dressed, quickfire but decent-mannered rapper for an idol group. 

He still thinks about it, about what happened back in Seoul, about the things he’s not supposed to be thinking about when he’s on vacation trying to be better or trying to flee himself, after everything. After Mark had gone to bed, tipsy and high and out of his mind that night he’d tried to kiss him, Baekhyun had sat on the balcony, lighting a cigarette, looking at the waves over the ocean, a sigh losing itself on his lips, painfully similar memories flooding his mind.

.

Baekhyun meets Kyungsoo for the first time when she's seventeen. It’s a boy name that both does and doesn’t suit a pretty girl like her, but Baekhyun doesn’t care. D.O’s also her other nickname. She likes it better, the sound of her birth name making her wince, and so Baekhyun does. He’s always been a people pleaser anyway.

They're in a coffee shop, and she's bold, he figures, to be meeting him there alone, her short black hair falling like a messy mop over her face, glasses resting on the tip of her nose. She's pretty, too, underneath the boyish clothes and gruff mannerisms, small and delicate with just a hint of softness to her figure, regular features, wide eyes. He's heard her sing, a glitchy little casting video that almost slipped away until Baekhyun caught a glimpse of it, heard her voice.

Baekhyun knew from the moment he'd seen her that she could be a star if he managed to get his hands on her. And he does get his hands on her, the way men like him do, watching her sip her coffee quietly as he explains her that he could make her famous, if she let him do so.

He’d been confident, too, despite being so fresh to the game himself, twenty-six and fresh out of two years of bullshit in the army, a foot soldier longing to be a general. Baekhyun sometimes misses that version of him, when he was still new to this, when excitement felt like being alive more than being dead. Kyungsoo had been one of his first discoveries, like a first crush, really, before being caught in the storm of what would come next.

  
  


Baekhyun's got an eye for these things, he knows, and despite training being hard, Kyungsoo proves to be determined and resilient in a way that both fits and doesn't fit her outward appearance. Her short hair grows longer, a little bit, her soft features accentuated with makeup, as she's outfitted with sparkly clothes to do some backup singing for a performance by a fading soloist Baekhyun knows is at the end of her product life cycle. 

He goes just to see Kyungsoo really, because he's fond of her, he really is, hangover from getting completely wasted at an industry party and blowing some closeted producer in the men's room safely tucked behind sunglasses and gelled hair, now. It’s networking, Baekhyun tells himself, because that’s what it is, in a way, and it makes it easier not to catch feelings like an idiot on most days.

Jongin’s told him that she’s been doing well, working hard, really. Baekhyun doesn’t doubt it one bit, because Jongin is good about these things, she really is, seeing talent where it burrows itself underneath thick skin. It’s because Jongin knows about thick skin, Baekhyun figures, about hiding in plain sight, too, maybe.

She's perfect, Kyungsoo, with her natural talent for the stage that hid under her quietness when he'd first met her, her voice, gorgeous, gorgeous, even with that hint of unsteadiness Baekhyun knows she's working hard to overcome in countless voice lessons and practice sessions in the company's building. 

They've been talking, exchanging text messages, and it's lovely to peel the layers that there are to Kyungsoo, one by one. She's not exactly the typical same faced, eager, overly invested trainee Baekhyun usually sees passing through the company like through revolving doors, but that's part of her charm, Baekhyun feels. He brings flowers to her backstage after the recording, and she reluctantly takes them, looks at them and bites her lips, a little bit.

"Is this to cover the hangover stench? What married man did you sleep with yesterday, Byun Baekhyun?" she asks, tone biting in a way that's only acceptable because she's so pretty. 

Up close, Baekhyun can see clearly that she lost some weight, because she's not quite thin the way their company likes their girls to be thin. It's not a bad look, but he can't help but to notice, really. It's his job to notice. 

"Partially. I told you you could call me _oppa_ , you know." 

Kyungsoo rolls her eyes, only turns to take off her makeup in the mirror. She's clumsy at it, obviously not used to it, and so Baekhyun props himself down to do it for her. She lets him, blushing a little bit as he lets go. It's sweet. 

"I came to tell you the news myself," he says softly. "They've set the debut date for you and the girls." 

Her eyes widen at that, and Baekhyun doesn't expect her to get up and wrap her arms around his neck, hug him. He can't see her face but he can feel the warmth of her smile close to him, the delighted giggle she has when she thanks him profusely, her eyes glinting with joy once she pulls away. 

This is the kind of Kyungsoo Baekhyun wishes to remember, when he thinks about her nowadays. Young and sweet, with an edge, still, but with that spark in her eye and the world still open in front of her.

  
  


Debut hadn't quite been the success he'd hoped for, giving him plenty of headaches over album sales while he got slammed by suits for not delivering just right on the product he'd presented them. It's not Kyungsoo or the girls fault, really. They're all very talented, and Jongin's the one leading them through elaborate dance routines that should be working but aren't, not quite. There just something that doesn’t quite set them apart from the rest.

In times like this, Baekhyun finds himself thinking about his dad, of all people, maybe because it’s one of these memories he clings to, the scrappy way they’d slave after money, one way or another, late nights shifts and long hours. In a lot of ways it’s revenge, perhaps, because Baekhyun promised himself he wouldn’t be his father, would never be his father, when he fucked off from home at seventeen and set on making history, at least as much as he could.

They’re on the car coming back from the recording of the new music video the girls are supposed to release in a few weeks, and Baekhyun knows it’s a gamble, a last ditch effort to avoid the shredder when it comes to musical acts that don’t quite lift off. 

He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t lost some sleep over it, because he has, because there’s a part of him that cares for Kyungsoo in a way he knows he shouldn’t, not when it comes to the bright young things he wants turn into supernovas, shining and then fading into dust. Kim Junmyeon told him so, last time they slept together and agreed to call the whole thing off, closeted married men proving once again to be Baekhyun’s kryptonite. They see each other around business meetings and chance office encounters, nowadays, acknowledging each other in that distant, colleague kind of way that’s suited to their station. Part of their former liaison had felt like prostitution, if Baekhyun’s to be perfectly honest with himself, but then the music business in general had always felt like prostitution in lots of ways.

Still, Baekhyun can’t stop, hasn’t stopped since he’d more or less begged his way for his girls, his pet project, to debut. It’s a gamble but it feels like the right one.

Kyungsoo’s next to him, exhausted, makeup still on her face with the look they went for with this one. It’s a gamble, the short hair, the boyish clothes, milking that girl crush concept for all it’s worth. She’s still pretty, because of course she is, soft features not quite as highlighted with makeup as it is the case with her bandmates, looking sharp and, Baekhyun can’t help but to think, not unlike the pretty paid boys he goes for when he’s lonely and he feels like making himself miserable.

He tries to shoo the thought away, though it hardly works, especially as Kyungsoo comes to rest her head against his shoulder, sighing softly in her sleep. Baekhyun looks out the window, the blurring of the building passing them by, the nervousness under his skin simmering still. He closes his eyes, breathes deeply, thinks about the boys he likes to take to bed as his hand softly caresses Kyungsoo’s fluffed hair, checks his phone, bites his lips.

The next week, when the video comes out, there’s outrage, at first, and then sales, a lot of it, because Kyungsoo is a goldmine, she really is. Baekhyun gets to collect all the glory, hitting that one hit score that’s enough to ensure him a career in show business.

  
  


Baekhyun's got other contracts managing other groups now, but he's just a man, no matter what he's taking on a semi-regular basis now to make himself feel like he's on the top of the world. He can't help but to have favorites and Kyungsoo, with her soft features and sharp tongue, will always be his favorite.

It's not unlike first love, in lots of way, still fresh and exciting when he takes her to a fancy restaurant to celebrate her first win as a solo artist. She's a precocious one, she really is, excelling at everything she does in an almost inhuman way when she puts her mind to it. She's still the headstrong teenage girl he found on a mixtape a few years ago, grown up and hardened, soft curves of her youth gone and reshaped by the sharp stage lights and unforgiving business of entertaining the masses for corporate interests. It shows in the mature black dress she’s wearing, the makeup she did on herself, learned to do because she had to, the heels she doesn’t wobble on anymore.

"It makes me feel like you're my pimp when you do stuff like this," she tells him as she looks over the menu. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you're one of these old slimy dudes that prey on innocent young girls that sing and dance as a living."

She isn't wrong, about him being slimy and old, or being, in a lot of ways, her pimp, but he has never been with one of his boy budding artists like this. It's too messy, and generally just bad business practice, really, on top of moral considerations Baekhyun doesn't really have any business to comment on.

"You're too smart to fall for those anyway," Baekhyun shrugs, serving her and himself expensive wine he shouldn't be mixing with the pills he'll be taking tonight to sleep. "Besides, you've never had foie gras, and I know you're dying to try it, don't lie to me."

It's true. Kyungsoo loves food in a way that makes talk show hosts coo at tales of her culinary prowess. She smiles when they do, plays the game, a natural, even though she's been more or less constantly dieting since debut. Baekhyun remembers that one time she’d texted him in the middle of the night while he was busy with a guy he’d picked up at a bar to tell him he should have warned her about this when he’d scouted her, that she hated him a little bit just for that, sometimes.

She’s careful as she eats, like this is a luxury for her, because it is, in a lots of ways. Baekhyun watches how her lips curl around the fork, her eyes closed. It makes Baekhyun feel just a little bad, just a tiny little bit, but it’s passing, really. Elegant french dishes, carefully placed on the plates, tiny little art pieces, feasts for the eyes and for the mouth, decadent, because Baekhyun is weak, and he wants to spoil Kyungsoo, even though she’s the one who made him too, in a way.

Kyungsoo’s a star, just like Baekhyun knew and promised she would be. There’s no point in dwelling on the sacrifices it took took to get there.

“It’s good,” she states halfways through the meal. “I bet Chanyeol would like it too.”

Her comment makes Baekhyun take a long and pointed sip from the glass of wine he’s ordered for the both of them. Chanyeol’s her boyfriend, Baekhyun knows, even though he wishes he didn’t. He met him a few times, because Kyungsoo insisted on dragging him to one of their coffee meeting their coffee meeting, and he doesn’t like him, not one bit.

Park Chanyeol is one of those overgrown teenagers with a pretty face and a knack for charming girls with a few bad guitar chords and big bright smiles. He says he wants to be a singer, is training for it, growing out his hair that he pulls up in an ugly bun under the pretense that perhaps the stylists would like to play around with it once he debuts. Kyungsoo loves to play with it, loves to smile at him, shining in a way she rarely is nowadays, focused on work, on being the best she can be at this ruthless game she’s been dragged into with her pretty eyes and her pretty face.

Baekhyun knows the type, has seen hundreds of Park Chanyeols come and go in the business, replaceable and forgettable, leeching onto anything that might get them famous. Maybe, in another situation, Baekhyun would have bedded him the way he does with boys he likes to keep around for pleasure without any of the commitment he doesn’t feel himself ever able to give. 

Baekhyun’s good at observing these things. Kyungsoo slaps her boyfriend and calls him an idiot, but there’s this spark in her eye as she does, something Baekhyun’s perceptive enough to catch. She talks about him in that discrete but obvious way, mentions him like this, because she’s nineteen and a little bit in love with a boy who, in Baekhyun’s doesn’t deserve any of it.

“I suppose he would,” he says flatly, and that’s as much of an answer as Kyungsoo needs.

She looks at him, sighs, and changes the topic. They’ve never talked about it, but it’s obvious what Baekhyun thinks and Kyungsoo, for all the swearing she does at him when the mics and the cameras are off, cares about what Baekhyun thinks, more than anything else.

She drinks a little too much, because she isn’t as used to it as Baekhyun is, drunk on a single glass, stumbles on her high heels when they got out of the restaurant, her laugh a bit too loud and her cheeks dusted with pink from the wine. She clings to Baekhyun as she does, laughing, so, so, so pretty.

“Have you ever slept with a girl before?” she asks lightly, tipsy, as Baekhyun sits next to her in the driver’s seat. “How did it feel, _oppa_?”

He’s perfectly sober, maybe a little bit too much, and he can hear the tension underneath her otherwise relaxed behaviour, talking like she doesn’t care about it. He shakes his head, starts the engine. He should be the adult here. He shouldn’t be having this discussion with a nineteen year old girl he’s supposed to be managing the career of, but it’s Kyungsoo, and Baekhyun can’t refuse Kyungsoo anything.

“I did,” he admits, and it’s true. “It wasn’t… It wasn’t bad. Just, there was something missing, I imagine.”

Kyungsoo seems to ponder a little bit on his words, as they drive through the city, fiddling with her fingers, her eyes on the shimmering lights of Seoul at night. He doesn’t bother her, doesn’t want to. It’s only as they arrive to the dorm and that Baekhyun stops the car that he realises she’s crying.

“It’s just… It’s not working,” she mumbles, turning away so he doesn’t see her face. “When I’m with him… It’s just not working and I feel so bad and so guilty and…”

Baekhyun doesn’t really know what to do, really, and so he hands her the box of tissues he keeps in his glove compartment, waits a little bit, presses his hand against her shoulder. It’s scary to do so, because she looks like she’s about to break, almost.

They don’t talk. Kyungsoo calms down without another word, apologizes vaguely and thanks him for the meal. He says it’s no problem. She opens the door, leaves, sniffles a few times before she gets a hold onto herself, slips back into the building.

It’s weird, how Baekhyun just stays there, his breathing too loud in the empty car. He doesn’t know how long he stays there, until he heads home, back to his empty penthouse he hardly ever sleeps in and his kept boys he hardly ever has around for more than a few weeks at a time.

  
  


Kyungsoo is twenty-three when she shaves her head at 1AM on an Instagram live and Baekhyun is the one who’s supposed to pick up the pieces. Yet, he doesn’t, not in the way they expect him to anyway, making it a thing, because it’s nice, it’s fresh, he figures, having his very own tiny little Korean Grace Jones like a trend piece. He can’t have closeted married men in Korea forever, but that doesn’t mean he can’t make himself icons to worship the way the gay men he finds himself with in LA when he’s there to meet producers do.

It is trendy, he frames it in his head, going over her text messages with a wince as he waits in the elevator to bring him to the dorm in which Kyungsoo’s been living for the past year or so now. It’s a nice location they have now, Kyungsoo and the girls, because they’re one of the hottest girl groups in the nation, and because Baekhyun, now even more than ever, knows how to get his way when it comes to the office politics that are needed to get his way.

It’s not the first time Kyungsoo has him lose sleep, but it’s the first time he gets notice from it through social media first. It’s also the first time she slaps him when she sees him. She’s a little bit out of her mind, but Baekhyun doesn’t hold her responsible for it, her eyes teary in a way that makes Baekhyun’s heart clench, a little bit, because he cares about her, he really does.

“It’s your fault! It’s all your fault! I hate you! You did this to me!”

The hair is very shaved, and it’s not a bad look, even though it’s so obviously a bad breakup look, now that Baekhyun’s there. She’s sobbing against his chest, loud and undignified, really. Still, it’s nice under his fingertips, the slight roughness of her bald scalp. It’s not the first time she has these mood swings, and it feels painfully familiar in lots of ways, being twenty-three, shaving off all of his hair and out of control, albeit in a very, very different way.

Maybe that’s why Baekhyun likes her so much, but he doesn’t want to dwell on it, not right now.

“I’m just… I’m just so tired,” she hiccups between tears. “It’s like… I wake up and I’m already exhausted. It’s like I can’t feel anything at all.”

Baekhyun nods, and it’s funny, how this feels still like first love, back when he flirted with girls because it was high school and easy. He sits with her on the bed, holding her, and she’s so light. He made her this way, she’s right, in that sense, how she hates food with the same passion she used to love it, how there’s this meanness to her smiles when the cameras are off and she can allow herself to be anything less than the nation’s most virginal fantasy girlfriend.

He feels bad because he’s the one who dragged her into this, after all. He almost tells Park Chanyeol so, when they meet for coffee later that week because Chanyeol’s quit the junk after dropping out of his future idol training and Baekhyun wants to have him on his side, for once.

There’s, surprisingly, none of that awkward stilted thing straight guys do when they have to interact with Baekhyun in full knowledge of his inclinations. It’s Korea, he figures, the _hyung_ thing. The uncomfortable barely covert homosexual thing Baekhyun’s had going on since he got his military service over and done with can only soil their national pride in pure masculine bonding. Maybe Park Chanyeol likes men, Baekhyun thinks idly as he watches him pour milk and sugar in his coffee. It’s not like he cares, really, but still, it wouldn’t be out of place in an industry like theirs, really.

Park Chanyeol’s pretty, long lashes fluttering in delight, when he gets excited over cake. He’s casual when he explains this whole thing about being ‘once a fat kid, always a fat kid’ to Baekhyun as they’re chatting. He’s eating it probably because he’s quit the training thing at a rival company to just do his own stuff, or at least that’s what he’s told Baekhyun over the phone. Maybe he’ll go to the military, get his service over with or something, Park Chanyeol says idly. There’s another fleeting thought about how similar to the boys Baekhyun usually keeps Park Chanyeol is, a thought that Baekhyun chases away almost instantly. It isn’t the right time for that.

Baekhyun’s never liked Chanyeol, really, no matter how much Kyungsoo tried to make him like him, dragging her first boyfriend whenever she’d get the chance to her off the clock meetings with him. It’s not Chanyeol’s fault, not really, even though Baekhyun can’t help but to have very little patience for theatrics coming from the kind of emotionally clueless, self-centered straight guys this industry is full of.

“You know, Soo’s the one who broke up with me,” he says casually between sips of coffee. “I saw about her hair, the whole scandal thing… I don’t know about you, but I think it suits her anyway, because she’s so pretty.”

He’s at least smart enough to understand why Baekhyun wanted to see him, to guard himself. Maybe the training he got without being able to properly debut was not all in vain; it’s obvious that he knows how to spot danger when he sees it. Still, Baekhyun can only watch him curiously, trying to gage him, and it’s hard, because a lot about Park Chanyeol feels like an act, it really does.

“I shouldn’t tell you that, but… She’s always been, you know. Intense. Even when we were still dating and everything went swimmingly. I never tried to dig deeper, because… I don’t know. But still. She never explained to me why she broke up with me, you know?”

He does that lip chewing thing, and it’s cute, almost too natural.

“If you’re here to do the whole hyung talk to me about her, I’m just saying that you don’t have to worry about me. She didn’t text me or anything, and I don’t think… I don’t think we’ll ever get back together anyway. I mean, you know her.”

Baekhyun does know Kyungsoo, and maybe he’s misjudged Park Chanyeol, about his intentions around her for the few years they dated in secret. Maybe he was too harsh on him, on the unimpressed look he’d repress giving to Kyungsoo while she showed him videos of her boyfriend’s soulful yet naive compositions about white t-shirts and cropped haircuts, acoustic guitar and a deep scratchy voice.

Baekhyun gives him his card, and then a few months later, a connection to a recording studio in LA that will take him in for a few months, along with the one-way plane ticket that will get him there.

It’s business, he knows, even when there’s this weird feeling inside his chest that bubbles up every time he finds himself thinking about it too hard.

  
  


It's to be expected, Baekhyun supposes, the slow and steady decaying of idols. One of his new boys, an artist with a sweet foreign accent, the whimsy of youth and the detachment of a ruthless businessman, would probably have something learned and wise to say about it, dead european authors to quote, and the most endearing Thai smile to accompany it. Baekhyun picked him from a private add and pays him to be endearing and sweet, after all.

Baekhyun tries not to think about what it all means sometimes, but the boy is good at reading him and, most importantly, poke at him where it hurts. The truth is that Baekhyun wants to be hurt, in a way, to be made right once more.

He's in California when he hears about what happened to Kyungsoo, her new scandal. She stopped texting him her secrets over the past year, in that weird, detached way some connections that can’t be called quite friendships die, sometimes. It had started slowly, stopping to take her to restaurants, to go to her shows, and it’s work, in a lot of ways, the big and important work he has to do, now that he’s built his career on the success of these girls he picked out, posed and branded into idols.

When something happens to Kyungsoo, that day, Baekhyun finds out to his own horror that, despite everything, he feels nothing.

It's the middle of the night and he's not partying or working, the two having pretty much merged into this creature of cold comfort over the last decade or so. Doctor's order, because Baekhyun can afford to follow doctor's orders, unlike the girl who's in a hospital bed right now, held between life and death.

_"I can't take this, oppa, you know it'll make me fat, and I can't... I can't get fat, oppa, please..."_

Kyungsoo had always been Baekhyun's favorite, that's probably what makes it worse, the guilt that eats him alive when he thinks about her. Maybe guilt isn't quite the right word, not as strong as shame, as that all-encompassing sense of failure that makes him want to dig himself into a hole in the ground.

He lies in his hotel room in L.A., looking at his phone with an empty look on his face, sighing as he tries to make sense of her hurried texts he didn’t pick up because he was too fucked up to care about anything but sparkling lights and himself. Nothing makes sense, and it’s worse, in lots of ways, than genuine pain could ever be.

He should be calling her, but he doesn’t.

“You’re calling me in the middle of the night. What’s wrong?” 

Ten’s voice comes softly on the other side of the line. There’s noise around him, and Baekhyun vaguely remembers something about Hong Kong the last time they talked to each other. Ten is cute, and he can picture him, stuffing himself with dim sum, busy streets and shining night lights, laughing, pretty, pretty.

“Everything,” Baekhyun says simply, and there’s a chuckle on the other side of the line, something he deserves, really.

“Oh, _hyung_ ,” replies Ten’s voice. “Tell me everything.”

And so Baekhyun does that, tells him everything, about Kyungsoo and about the girls, about the gnawing feeling inside his chest that won’t go now, about the fact that he hasn’t been able to cry unless he’s choking on dick for over a decade now. Ten listens, because Ten is sweet, Baekhyun figures, and because Baekhyun pays him to be sweet, too. There’s this soft hum sometimes on the other side of the line, delicate like the drawings he’s seen of Ten, like his lean body when he lets Baekhyun make love to him like he really, genuinely means it.

Baekhyun can imagine Ten in Hong Kong, and he doesn’t ask if he’s paid to be there, to care for someone with too much money and the daddy issues that usually come with it. 

It takes a few weeks. The media storm dies down a little bit. There are more things to take care of. Baekhyun doesn’t let himself think about Kyungsoo. He doesn’t have the time to, anyway, because there’s work, always, more and more of it. He cause this, all of it, everything that he has to deal with now, and he can’t catch a break, not when it’s all so wrong and he’s all so wrong and...

It dawns upon him that he can’t sleep anymore, and that because he can’t sleep, he can’t think, and that because he can’t think, he can’t work. When he collapses from exhaustion in the middle of a meeting, he gets a doctor’s card to force him to take a break and force him to get better, to sort his shit and maybe stop being a terrible human being.

Kim Junmyeon calls him, sits him down at a cafe, and Baekhyun can’t help but to remember similar encounters, similar discussions, really, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol and all of these other fresh faces he picks up and manages and in the end crumbles as part of his work.

Kim Junmyeon is older now, and Baekhyun figures he is older too himself, and that it shows, from the fine lines on his face Baekhyun knows he must agonize over to the fit of his suit. He’s divorced, too, which makes sense, Baekhyun figures, as he watches him sip his coffee, carefully, quietly.

It’s funny how discussions with Junmyeon are, tables having turned, quite literally, and Baekhyun wonders if Park Chanyeol might have felt just as helpless as himself when he’d sat him down like that, and given her the same silent warning Junmyeon is giving him right now, talking about the weather and work even though there’s something heavier in the way he holds himself.

“You haven’t tried to contact her family, have you?” Junmyeon asks softly, like he cares, and maybe he genuinely does care. 

Baekhyun can’t know, not really. He knows Junmyeon’s palm is warm over the back of his hand, his eyes on him, appraising, calculating. It hits Baekhyun because he realizes that this is how it feels, how it must have felt, for all these years.

Junmyeon, in essence, tells him to take care of himself, paying for both of their coffees and heading out in the fresh crisp air of Seoul in the spring.

Baekhyun doesn't do that. He keeps running away like he'd ran away from home, partied his early twenties in a haze of sex and drugs and then enlisted in a desperate attempt to quiet the existential angst that came with the perspective of having to deal with reality one day or another.

.

Ten kisses him sweetly because he's sweet, like the boys Baekhyun pretends to be in love without ever letting himself fully open to be loved back. They have a good deal, he supposes, because Ten doesn't remind him of Kyungsoo too much, doesn't cling, lightness in all of their embraces. They’ve got the Pacific ocean and silly clumsy summer boy crushes, surfing the waves, the giant trees surrounding them, the breeze over the sea. It’s like running away from everything, from the heaviness of simply living, because that’s what Ten is to him, in a lot of ways, an escape.

Tomorrow he’ll drive Mark to the beach, watch him tame the waves, clear his mind, a little bit. It’s endearing, Baekhyun figures now, youth as his own feels like it’s slipping between his fingers without him being able to do anything about it.

"You're thinking about that girl," he'd whispered in his ear as he'd used his pretty fingers to slowly work Baekhyun open one night. "You shouldn't, you know that." 

It’s humiliating, how he is right now, and maybe he needs it. He needs Ten to be this soft and terrible to him, because he deserves it, in a way, has always deserved it.

"I won't, then," Baekhyun had replied softly between small pants of pain and pleasure, letting himself be taken care of, for once.

*


	3. Chapter 3

# Ten

Sometimes Ten thinks about home and it feels weird to do so.

Ten’s Chinese grandmother used to tell him this story when he was a kid, about a scorpion and a turtle trying to cross a river during the monsoon. The turtle told the scorpion she’d let him travel on her back while she swam to the other side, at the condition that the scorpion wouldn’t sting her. The scorpion agreed and hopped on the turtle’s back, but halfway found himself stinging her.

_“Why did you sting me?”_ asked the turtle as the venom pumped through her veins. _“Now we’re both going to die because of you.”_

 _“I couldn’t help it,”_ the scorpion replied. _“It’s in my nature.”_

Ten had never been quite sure as to what was the purpose of the story, the moral of it. Maybe something about trusting strangers, but there had never been clear explanations as to the signification of that last part. Maybe it’s about Ten. Maybe it is in Ten’s nature to sting and hurt whatever he comes into contact with despite himself.

He thinks about it sometimes, when he’s with one of his boys, the young ones like Kun who makes love to him in fancy hotel rooms paid for with his father’s money, and the older ones like Baekhyun who drags him halfways across the world to pretend he’s not running away from his problems.

It hadn’t been too bad to leave Hong Kong for this, he finds. Kun had been sweet, really sweet, but Kun is trouble the way all of Ten’s rich boyfriends are, either married or repressed beyond any hopes of return. Still, he’d liked getting to drag his prim and proper heir to a multinational finance corporations in the crummy underbelly of the city, getting him drunk at art galleries and persuading him to just breathe, sometimes, a little bit.

Playing manic pixie nightmare sugar baby, perhaps. Ten’s good at that. Maybe that’s what’s in his nature, after all.

He’s busy sketching on the porch that overlooks the ocean that morning after Mark Lee obviously had his little talk with Baekhyun, a new kind of pep to his step that Ten knows comes from something cute like getting a crush. Mark’s cute in general, the way he flustered at Ten offering him to smoke with him, along with his rather endearing ineptitude when it came to flirting. It reminds Ten a little bit of high school in many ways, of awkward boy crushes and secret kisses.

Kissing while high on the beach had been fun. Ten doesn’t care for more than that, though.

“Can you make me some tea, please?” he asks Mark who’s making himself coffee even though he’s already seemingly wide awake. “Green box on the shelf.”

Mark jumps, because Mark is just jumpy in general, really. He still serves the tea, because he’s well-behaved, his parents raised him right. It’s cute.

The night before, Baekhyun had called home, a stern expression on his face, hushed Korean Ten can only catch bribes of, really. It’s work, because it’s always work when it comes to Baekhyun, handsome and in charge and so, so, so self destructive. It’s fair, he supposes, that he lets him do this thing where he shuts himself off with his laptop and works until he passes out. Ten gets a day off this way. It’s really for the best.

Ten's having fun with Mark, he really is, because Mark's endearing and sweet, showing him the right way to handle a surfboard with a focused expression on his face and sea salt bleached hair he told Ten he'd done on a whim over his bathroom sink.

"You still live with your parents, right?" Ten asks later as they're laying down on the warm sand, exhausted from battling the ocean all afternoon.

The smell of the sea feels nice on his face, and he feels Mark shifting next to him. Grains of dust press against one another wetly, slowly. Ten supposes this is an uncomfortable question, but he doesn't care, not too much anyway.

"Yeah," Mark admits shyly, and Ten doesn't have to turn his head to know he's doing that adorable crunchy face thing. "Have to, until I finish my degree and everything. They're nice just, you know... Asian, I guess?"

Ten shrugs. He doesn't really know what that is supposed to mean. His parents are just as Asian as Mark's, but he doubts he'd survive spending more than a week at a time in their home in Bangkok without going completely mad. He gets up, looks down at Mark with an indulgent smile.

"You're not being very clear," he teases, sits upright in the sand. "But it's okay if you'd rather not talk about it."

Mark makes the scrunchy face thing again. It is way too adorable.

"No, no, I mean, it's just... Expectations, I suppose. I feel like I'll never live up to them."

Ten chuckles.

"I doubt that's an Asian thing as much as it is a general parents thing."

It's funny to hear Mark talk about these things, maybe because they feel so familiar yet so foreign to Ten's ears. Expectations... The word sounds funny even now, like memories of international private schools and expensive dance classes his mother and father endlessly argued over.

It's been over a year since he last went back to Thailand. He phones, once in awhile, because he is a diligent son when he can help it, but there's always those weird pauses in the conversation, the questions that remain unsaid. It's mostly his mom that talks, about his cousins getting married and about the weather. He knows she does that because he's always been her favorite, despite everything.

He goes to kiss Mark's cheek, and Mark doesn't flinch at it too much, maybe because he's getting used to it.

"It's okay. Parents are difficult, especially when they love you and you love them back. You'll figure it out."

Mark does that adorable deer in the headlights expression, until he shakes his head and chuckles with an embarrassed air. Ten's right, he knows he is, obviously, but he knows Mark can't help it, not really, the whole existential angst that comes with the fact that growing up is hard.

Consciously, also, there's a part of him that's glad that Mark didn't sleep with Baekhyun, perhaps, because Baekhyun is a lot for someone who can't help but to care so much the way Mark does. Maybe it's better this way. Maybe it's better that Ten is the one who gets to hurt him instead.

Ten decides to video call Kun because he doesn't know any better, really, maybe because of that scorpion and turtle story he keeps thinking about. It's night when he does, and Baekhyun spent the entire day in bed being miserable because he messed up with his medication earlier this week and made the mistake of checking in with work in the morning. It's nothing Ten isn't used to, nothing he can't deal with, pressing a kiss on Baekhyun's forehead as he grunts in acknowledgement before heading out in the unit's kitchen to impulsively press Kun's contact on his phone.

Maybe he should have called instead, because then he wouldn't have had to look at Kun's face. It's unfair how pretty he is, it really is, how he's just waking up, too, being a tease with his shirt off and the soft morning light behind him. The smartphone camera really doesn’t do him any justice, but Ten’s always had the eye and the imagination to fill out the blanks

"You look like softcore pornography like this, Kunkun," Ten teases him, but he's a hundred percent serious.

Kun does that adorable yawning thing, frowns.

"I'm too chubby for sex work and you know it. That's why I majored in politics. Basically the same, but you don't have to look good, just rich."

Ten smiles, because that's the Kun he likes to think about, smart and calm and witty, tragically self-deprecating. It's sweet to think of him this way, in a way that's got the right kind of distance for it not to hurt too much. Ten doesn’t ask if he’s feeding himself properly anymore, or if he makes sure to sleep properly, the workaholic he is. It’d be pointless. Kun's good at lying, because the reason why he does politics instead of whatever it is that Ten does is because of a different kind of daddy issues than the specific kind of kept boy activities Ten likes to do.

"So, I guess that's the time where I ask you what's happening with your internship, right?"

A wince.

"I don't think you need a descriptor, really. It's everything I expected it to be. Serving an authoritarian and inflexible large organization with morally ambiguous purposes. What about you? Are you in Milan right now? Paris? London?"

"Canada, actually. It's sweet. The great outdoors. I persuaded Baekhyun to take me."

Kun does that face he does when he's upset and he doesn't want to let it show, squinching eyes and tense, tired smile.

"Baekhyun... Which one is that one? The music exec?"

"That one. Don't look so tense. I think you'd get along swimmingly. He knows a thing or two about working for a dictatorship with bad western press."

Ten's only adding oil to the fire, but it's fine, he supposes, because Kun has this beautiful haughty look on his face now. Kun visibly tenses on the other side of the screen, in the beautiful Shanghai morning. Is there a high level of air pollution there today? Ten can't know, hopes there isn't. Kun's sensitive to it.

"I've always thought you needed to become a special breed of predator to work in pop entertainment."

"Yeah, a little bit," Ten is forced to acknowledge. "But he's good at his job for other reasons. I like him. He pays me well. And he reminds me of you sometimes."

That's the closest thing to an 'I love you' that they'll ever exchange, and it seems to soothe Kun in some way. The tension is still there, because it always is, because it's Kun, and maybe Ten likes Kun a little bit more than he should, in more than one way.

Sometimes, when Ten sleeps with other men, he thinks of him, even though he shouldn't. It's arousing, to think about how Kun closes his eyes and bites his lips when he climaxes, how quiet he is when he does, how he can't get enough of Ten playing with his hair when they're both bathing in the afterglow. He's not stupid enough to tell Kun about it, even though Kun's not enough of an idiot to think it would change anything about their push and pull dynamic, and about the fact that neither of them is ready to commit to anything more than fleeting touches in hotel rooms Kun's wealthy parents pay for and the occasional getaway to Singapore under the pretext of a conference a bright young man with a bright open future like Qian Kun should attend.

One time, for Chinese New Year, Ten had sketched a small portrait of him in sumi ink, wrapping it in a red envelope and posted it on a whim to Kun’s address in Shenzhen where he’d been busy at some sort of entry level assignment for the nebulous political work he knows Kun does but never bothered to dig up more than anything else. To this day, he’s not sure if Kun ever received it, and somehow Ten hasn’t found the strength within himself to ask him if he did or not.

It would mean too much, Ten knows, and they can’t afford to mean too much to each other, at least that’s what he tells himself every time they almost come close to anything like attachment.

Mark’s funny when he’s high, when he’s badly trying to hide his obvious crush on Baekhyun, and when he lets Ten toy with him because Mark can’t say no to Ten at all. They spend more time together, because of course they do, with Baekhyun pulling the absentee sugar daddy act with a smile and a transfer to Ten’s bank account from his phone when he can’t bring himself out of bed some days. Ten can’t say he minds. This is the kind of relationship they have, in lots of ways, and he doesn’t want to care, at least not too much.

He can’t care for emotionally unavailable overachieving handsome men with high pressure careers and a bad relationship with their father. Whatever that very specific type of doomed relationship is supposed to be.

Him and Mark are snacking on trail mix in the middle of a hiking trail. Baekhyun’s in a better mood today, tagging along and joking at Mark in his heavily accented English, even though there’s always that spark missing in his eye only Ten can really catch. The forest is gorgeous around them in a different way than the ocean they’ve been surfing in earlier today. It’s the lush trees, the moist air, the sheer feeling of evergreen life that surrounds them like a soft mist. It was Mark’s idea to come here in the first place, and Ten had been skeptical at first, although he can see now why Mark had been so adamant about coming here.

Ten snaps a picture for Instagram, makes a point not to have Baekhyun show in it, as usual. He opts for a no-filter look, sighs as he rests his head cutely on Mark’s shoulder. He can feel his jaw work extra hard on the raisins, but he doesn’t care, not too much anyway.

“How did you know about this spot?” Ten asks casually, because he feels like it, really.

“It’s, uh… It’s one of Johnny’s favorite spots. We came here just the two of us a few time during off season...”

Ten raises an eyebrow, but what surprises him the most is that Baekhyun, who’s coming back from taking his own nature pictures,, is the one who asks the following question.

“Who’s Johnny?”

More blushing, so cute, so sweet.

“He’s a friend,” Mark lies so badly Ten has to repress a laugh. “He’s the one who usually looks over the pension during the summer.”

“And he brings you one-on-one to secluded fairytale nature spots in a totally friendly way?” Ten scoffs. “Is he straight or something?”

That earns him a little sharp look from Baekhyun that Mark won’t catch. It’s expected, and Ten really should be nicer, not just to the poor kid, really. Maybe it’s the spider and turtle story again, Ten’s nature.

There’s more blushing from Mark, who fumbles with his words trying to figure out the kind of excuses Ten can’t help but to associate with his own teenage straight crushes. He’s sure Baekhyun can relate. Still, he should be nice to Mark, sipping from the designer water bottle he brought for the trek and handing it to Mark with an amicable smile.

“I, uh… I’m not sure how he self-identifies?” Mark ponders a bit awkwardly.

There’s an even more awkward pause, Baekhyun doing that comforting older brother thing where he smiles a sharp, white smile, ruffles Mark’s hair and tells him it’s all fine with a witty little joke. He’s a professional, Ten knows, and he’s grateful for it in times like these, almost forgetting the vague story of that girl Baekhyun managed in what seems like another life, now.

Still, it stays in his mind, Mark’s youthful, adorable crush that still makes Ten roll in bed next to Baekhyun pretending to sleep that night. From his reluctant tone, Ten can instantly size that Johnny guy without having to hear more. It’s typical, he knows, rugged handsome guys refusing the kind of labels that would keep them from being free-spirited heartbreakers with commitment issues. He knows because he used to be just like that, still is, a little bit. He doesn’t like to introspect like this, taste that bitterness that crawls into his mouth when he thinks too hard about Kun.

The sun has already risen in Shanghai, Ten knows. He hopes Kun will let himself be happy, maybe pick a pretty girl to fuck instead of working himself to the bone trying to be someone he isn’t for his rich, stern, unbelievably well-connected parents.

Maybe that’s why he knocks on Mark’s door in the middle of the night, making Mark jump and curse from what Ten figures is knocking his toe on something. He does feel a bit bad for it, but that doesn’t keep him from propping himself on Mark’s bed, closing his eyes to breathe that very specific Mark smell as he does, shameless as always.

“Couldn’t sleep. Let’s have a slumber party while daddy’s away.”

It’s a joke but it’s not really a joke, and Mark makes that shy but definitely annoyed face that Ten’s come to know in the past few weeks. He laughs it off, the way he always does, sprawling himself on the bed not unlike a cat, looking up at Mark with a spark in his eyes.

“I feel like we have a boy trouble discussion we didn’t get to finish earlier today. Wanna tell me more about it?”

It’s both to satisfy Ten’s curiosity and, he feels, because Mark wants to talk to someone about this, or at least that’s what Ten hopes. It’s comfortable, too, to snuggly fit himself on Mark’s side, like that’s where he belongs, really, closing his eyes. Like this, he’s listening to his heartbeat as he speaks about the kind of endearing teenage angst that Ten misses, sometimes, when he thinks about home too much.

He has no idea what that guy with the DJing and modelling gigs looks like, but Mark’s voice is soft as he talks about him, sparse on details when it comes to both sex and just generally Johnny’s physique. It’s understandable, although not fully satisfying for Ten’s nosiness, really.

“I just wish things were clearer between us,” Mark attempts to conclude with a long sigh, eyes closed, after a long, emotionally-charged description of how both great and terrible Johnny Seo makes him feel. “I guess it’s just… Men? Is this how it is?”

“It is how it is,” Ten agrees, playing the kind older brother part, for once. “But you know you can talk to him first. Ask him to make things clear.”

It’s kind of stupid to be saying this, Ten knows deep down, because it’s not like he’s even following his own fucking advice. Still, Mark doesn’t know that, and he makes that slightly concerned but mostly understanding face Ten figures is a good sign.

“I guess… I guess I should,” Mark says softly, eyes closing, breathing steady. “It makes sense.”

It does, Ten knows it does, but still can’t have his mind fully remain in the moment, still thinks about a pretty soft voice curling around Mandarin vowels, and what it means for Ten to still yearn for it despite the fact that he shouldn’t. It’s different, he tells himself. Mark isn’t poisonous like Ten, and it isn’t in his nature to bend and break everything he touches.

There’s that ugly jealous feeling in Ten’s gut when he comes to wrap his arms around Mark, cuddling like they’re friends even though they aren’t really. It’s not fair because it’s not Mark’s fault, in lots of ways, he knows, and yet Ten can’t help but to hate him a little bit for being young and sweet and clueless, really.

It’s not exactly surprising when Baekhyun decides he needs to go back to Seoul earlier on a whim, something a bit crazed in his otherwise calm demeanor as he packs his things, pacing through the bedroom to pick up his clothes and talks at Ten more than he’s talking to Ten. It’s also a very familiar sight, Ten knows, because a lot of what their relationship is about is just that, talking at each other instead of with each other. It would be easier for Ten to hate Baekhyun if he cared about him, and maybe that’s why he doesn’t.

It’s good, maybe, in the end, that Mark and him didn’t fuck. It is for the best.

“Something came up, and I’ve already booked my flight,” Baekhyun says tersely, that manager voice, Ten has come to learn. “The reservation here is still valid for another four days, and you can use that credit card I gave you for your own flight back to Asia.”

Ten pouts, being cute, the role he’s playing when him and Baekhyun are together like this. He does this thing where he wraps himself around the older man, purring in his ear, soft skin, featherlight kisses on the side of his face. He doesn’t really mind Baekhyun leaving, not now anyway. It feels fitting. It feels like Baekhyun’s better than he used to, that he’s figuring some of this out, at least a little bit. It feels like improvement, and Ten can’t help but to have this fondness for the bad guy that Baekhyun objectively is in moment like these.

Ten nips at Baekhyun’s pulse point, because he aims for the kill, really. Baekhyun’s easy to read, even easier for that kind of pleasure, letting himself drown in it. He has to pause when he feels Ten’s lips on him, has to stop and close his eyes and gasp, delicate hand grabbing Ten’s hair, a sigh.

Ten only has to ask and he’ll be given whatever he wants, however he wants it, he knows.

“Fuck me before you leave tomorrow,” he whispers into Baekhyun’s ear. “Please?”

It’s nice, the way Baekhyun kisses like the aging young man he is, and he’s softer than when they started this whole thing, There’s less urgency in the way he holds Ten, less of that rage that translated in a very peculiar kind of heartbreaking desperation.

For the first time in a long time, Ten finds himself thinking about how they got there, about that first meeting they had, expensive French restaurant, the front Baekhyun put up in order to make himself appear larger than life, larger than he really is, like a preening peacock, really. There’s still a bit of that in Baekhyun, always will be, Ten knows, but there’s something more genuine about how he speaks to Ten, how they move against one another when they play at making love.

He’d been wearing that pastel blue suit, hair artfully tousled, edgy black credit card heavy inside his wallet. The meal had been decadent, the conversation similarly so. Charming, the way Ten had been brought up to be, soft gestures as he spoke the language of music and dance and love. Baekhyun had looked at Ten and seemed to really listen, and it had felt like something clicking between them, almost.

Ten knows now that it’s part of Baekhyun’s job to be good at this, and he thinks about Kun’s words about predatory older men scouting fresh face teenagers to turn them into pop star. Yet, he also knows that it’s because Baekhyun cares, so much, even if he shouldn’t. It’s both a blessing and a curse, because he wouldn’t be so miserable doing what he does if he didn’t. That’s what makes Baekhyun so tragic, in a sense, and what makes Ten stick around, a little longer, careful to keep a distance not to be caught in the crossfire.

They’d gotten along decently well from that moment on, transactional, uncomplicated. After the meal, Baekhyun had asked Ten if he wanted to go back to the hotel room he’d gotten for his stay in Busan, and Ten had said yes, easily.

Baekhyun fucked like he had something to prove back then, in a similar fashion all men Ten beds do, at least the first time anyway. He’d pressed Ten on the bed and blown him like his life depended on it, and it had been easy to get lost in his storm. Ten could take these things in strides, lean into the physicality of it all like one would lean against a rock in the middle of a hurricane. Expensive cigarettes after sex were an almost romantic touch, Ten had felt, naked in Egyptian cotton sheets and and giggling through small gasps as the feeling of Baekhyun’s lips pressing butterfly kisses up the column of his neck.

_“Is Ten your real name?”_ Baekhyun had asked later, a bit more relaxed, comfortable after the first few stumblings of new arrangements like there Ten’s become familiar with.

They’d been sprawled in Baekhyun’s ridiculously large bed in his ridiculously spacious empty condo her never spent any time in anyway. Over time, they’d moved from hotel rooms to this, naturally, almost.

_“Yeah, it’s not like a stripper name or anything. Thai naming conventions are funny like that.”_

Some of the men Ten had slept with ever since he’d ended up in Korea on a whim just to get as far as possible from Bangkok, they’d been gross about it, but Baekhyun wasn’t, isn’t, never had been. Maybe that’s why they’ve lasted as long as they did, so smoothly.

Baekhyun’s got pretty girly hands and sweet features that can be deceitful in a manner that’s still beautiful. He’s good with them, and with his mouth, pressing kisses on the inside of Ten’s thigh, working his brief down smooth legs.

“I shaved,” Ten says, with that satisfied look on his face as Baekhyun keeps kissing him with a smile. “You like it?”

Baekhyun hums.

“Very much.”

He’s like that, Baekhyun, when he gets into a mood, even when it’s obvious that he’s so weary, that he’s so tired, still. It’s the sadness in his eyes that never quite leaves, the heaviness that comes with the act of simply existing at times. It's a lot. Living is a lot, for Byun Baekhyun, it's obvious sometimes.

"Wanna eat you out," he says with a voice that feels like a purr. "Can I?"

"Yeah… Do it. Please."

Ten's good at this, at being pretty and poisonous, and he milks it for all it’s worth, every single drop. Baekhyun’s good with his tongue, and the feeling of his wet lips against his hole at first make him shiver, eyes closed moaning. It’s that first moment, really, that Ten always loves the best, the way pleasure first feels, the build up Baekhyun’s so good at when he gets in a mood. He is right now in a mood, and it shows, something different than what they’ve been to each other lately.

He’s good with his tongue, Baekhyun, as he ruins him bit by bit, so good, perfect. Ten moan, grips at the sheets, closes his eyes, gasps. It’s so good. It’s all so good, really, making him arch over the bed in a way that’s not too rehearsed, not to plastic, like he means it, and there’s a part of it that means it, too.

Ten scrambles for the condoms in the bedside table, his own cock bobbing between his legs, and he wants to spoil his emotionally unavailable old man, for once. He’s smirking as he does that mouth trick, rolling down the prophylactic down Baekhyun’s length with his tongue, making the older man gasp.

“You look like a porn star when you do this,” he says, and it makes Ten grin.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is one, I promise.”

Baekhyun has this fond look, still, as he caresses Ten’s hair, lays him down. He’s so handsome, wider and more muscular than Ten’s, and maybe in another life Ten wouldn’t be paid to fuck him and still enjoy it. He enjoys it now, as Baekhyun slowly enters him, the wet squelching of lube lewd and enticing at the same time. He gasps, whine, puts on a show, just for Baekhyun, because while there’s no genuine love between them, there is fondness and care, truly.

The next day, Baekhyun’s off to catch a flight back home, and Ten kisses him goodbye before coming back up to the bathroom of their suite. He spends the morning cleaning the leftover lube in his ass, shaving his body and texting whoever’s still in Beijing he can catch up with when he gets his plane back to Asia next week. Dong Sicheng happens to be the one who picks up the bait, really, and it makes Ten smile as he reads out loud the words he sees on his phone.

“You're lucky you're so pretty no one can ever stay upset with you for being so flighty," the message reads, and to which Ten opts to send a voice message of his own.

"You're the prettiest between the two of us, Winwin," he teases back, Sicheng's old nickname from when they did this erotic dancing act together in a club that paid some decent wandering money for Ten, and Sicheng's performing arts school tuition. "Don't let anyone ever make you feel any other way."

Sicheng’s nice, too nice for Ten, nicer than what Ten deserve, but it’ll be fine, the both of them hanging out when Ten gets back to China, hopefully charm a few more old men into catering to their whims and needs. Sicheng won’t be mean about it, or about Kun, really, even though he’s been watching the tragicomedy of their not-relationship since the start.

“I’ll send you my flight details so you can bring me flowers at the airport,” Ten adds in text, giggling to himself. “I like orchids the best; they’re gorgeous parasites like me.”

Sicheng doesn’t dignify that with a comment, only a pretty flower emoji followed by a rainbow and a heart. It’s fine. Once again, Sicheng really is too kind for Ten.

It's a slow morning, stretching as he always does, then lazing around the house like a content cat, up until he catches Mark bumping into him in the evening, hair unruly from what he can see is a long surfing day. It's cute. Mark's cute, like a distraction is supposed to be, sweet and eager and clueless like a puppy.

It’s funny, how slightly different Mark Lee acts now that Baekhyun isn’t there. Ten wonders briefly if it’s because he feels guilty, imagining they had a fight about the whole kissing incident because of him or something equally silly.

It’s silly because Ten and Baekhyun don’t fight; they don’t genuinely care about each other enough to do so, really.

The both of them, Mark and Ten, end up lounging on the deck, basking in the sun. Ten feels Mark shifting next to him, and it makes him smile a little, again, how Mark really is like an open book in a lot of ways. He expects him to say something about Baekhyun’s abrupt leaving, about the almost kissing Ten’s heard of from Baekhyun the following day, about the obvious sexual tension that has somewhat only partially lifted now that he’s gone.

That’s not what Mark ends up talking about when he opens his mouth.

“Is there someone waiting for you when you get home after this?”

It’s cute, and surprising even though it shouldn’t be, the concern Ten can hear in Mark’s voice. He’s a sweet kid, really.

“Why do you ask?”

Mark shrugs, blushing.

“I don’t know. I guess… I guess you seem lonely sometimes, in a way that’s probably different from Baekhyun, but still.”

Ten pauses, looks at Mark, genuinely surprised.

“I do?”

It’s a question but it’s not really a question. Ten hasn’t really thought about it in those terms in the past, but it makes sense. It still feels kind of ridiculous that it’s a slightly aimless kid with awkward crushes on perhaps straight guys and Ten’s unofficial sugar daddy who’s figuring that one out. He smiles, gracious as always, because he has to.

“... Yeah? I don’t know…” Mark shrugs. “Sorry if that’s nosy of me to ask.”

Mark’s cute too, when he blushes like this, and Ten has to lean forward and press one of those meaningless little kisses on his nose for it. Too cute.

“I suppose I do have someone,” he muses, allowing himself a brief though for Kun, before chasing it away. “What about you? Have you figured a way out of that boy trouble you were talking about earlier?”

There’s more blushing, more shuffling, more adorable fumbling with words, because it seems to be a tricky topic for Mark to deal with, it’s obvious. Ten lets it go for now, but keeps the inquiry in the back of his mind. He’s feeling nosy, as always.

There’s more surfing, more gorgeous waves Ten watch Mark effortlessly glide through. He’s almost heroic in the way he’s taming the ocean, the rainforest surrounding them, the air saturated with salt water. It’s different when Baekhyun isn’t there, but Ten doesn’t hate it, having a few days to himself, and having Mark Lee to himself too.

He snaps a short video of the surfer from his spot on the beach, grins to himself as he uploads it to Instagram with a slew of plant, ocean and hearts emojis.

He’s grinning still that night when he’s leaning against Mark in that same fire spot on the beach, rolling a blunt while Mark’s munching on some grilled meat from their earlier impromptu barbecue. The night’s surrounding them like a warm blanket, comforting, the wind not to harsh this time around. Ten’s got his plane ticket in the back of his mind, the uncertainty but also the joy of getting to spend some time in what his grandma used to call the Motherland for a little bit.

It’s all part of the nomadic lifestyle he fashioned himself through never allowing anything, or more specifically anyone, to force him to settle down. If there’s a bittersweet taste sometimes that remains in his mouth when he sits down and thinks about it too much, Ten swallows it down without hesitation.

“Wanna get high and makeout without the old man watching us this time?” he asks Mark with a teasing tone.

Mark rolls his eyes at that, but he takes the offered joint, embarrassed, mumbling something about a summer job straight out of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. It makes Ten laugh as he kisses him, and it’s an ugly, kind of all over the place kiss, which makes it even weirder when Mark kisses back this time. There’s something almost fiery in the way he does that, and when Ten pulls back, he can’t do anything but to whistle in admiration at Mark’s bravado. More giggles, the floaty feeling of weed and kissing and pretending to be carefree as always.

“Is this practice for your straight boy?” he asks, teasing, between makeout sessions.

Mark giggles a bit at that.

“No, not really. Is it practice for yours?”

He’s observant, too, Ten figures out as he leans in closer, enjoys the warmth of another body in a way that’s different from being with Baekhyun, that’s different from being with Qian Kun. It’s so bad. Even now, he can’t stop thinking about him. It’s bad.

“No, not really,” he muses, resting his head on Mark’s shoulder, floaty and nice, and there’s a weird ball of anxiety that still rests inside his stomach like everytime he smokes, but it’s not too bad, not too much too handle. “He’s not straight. Just a hopeless Chinese closet case. I guess that’s why I love him so much.”

Mark giggles at that, and he puts his hand over his mouth as an apology as he does too. There’s a hand that comes to play with Ten’s hair, too and it makes Ten purr, eyes closed. They stay like that for a while, and they do make out, because Mark is cute and sweet and adorable.

It’s a friendly kind of french kissing, really, like straight girls making out for boys, Ten guesses, even though there are no boys present at that specific moment besides them on the beach. Mark’s so gorgeous under that loose t-shirt, too, all that nice, firm skin a surf boy with sun bleached hair should have, perfect, perfect.

“Can I blow you?” Mark asks really out of the blue as they’re laying next to one another in the sand.

Ten shrugs.

“If you want tomorrow, when you’re sober, alright?”

It’s a valid objection, Mark seems to get it, and they keep kissing, under the stars, stumbling back home after putting out the fire, crashing in the same bed, limbs haphazard and tangled together. It’s not so bad, in a different way that Baekhyun isn’t so bad either. They’re no heaviness to how they snuggle together in bed, falling fast asleep.

Mark, as it turns out, isn’t really in the mood for oral sex the next morning, or at least he doesn’t voice any desire for it, which is good, Ten figures, as he picks up the rest of his things, gets ready to leave. There isn’t much to pick up, in essence, because Ten doesn’t carry much with him anyway, be it feelings or things, sketchbooks filled with scribbles he hasn’t worked the guts to show Qian Kun and fashionable clothes rich older men like Baekhyun buy him as decoration. It’s fine, for Ten at least, to only have these for now, to be floating in a way that’s different from smoking weed with some kid from Vancouver in the middle of the rainforest.

“You’re good to go? Checked if you have everything?” Mark asks, and it’s genuine, the way everything about Mark is genuine, Ten feels.

He feels it too, the slight hint of jealousy in his gut as he lets himself think about it a little too long, about what’s different, between him and Mark Lee.

“I think I’m good,” he says, pressing the sunglasses back over his nose, looking around as he waits for the ride Baekhyun set up for him that will bring him back to the continent and then onto a plan back to China. “What about you?”

Mark does this little embarrassed, scrunchy nose thing, and he look away in a manner that is way too adorable for Ten to handle. It’s fine, he thinks, as he chuckles under his breath and places a hand over the boy’s, because Mark Lee really is just a boy, it’s obvious now.

“I think I’m good too. I guess… I didn’t expect… Whatever that was from a summer job here, but I’m good. Does that make sense?”

“It does. Don’t worry,” Ten replies, serene. “Do you want to keep in touch? I’ll give you my contact and Baekhyun’s, if you want.”

There’s a pause during which Mark seems to think, long and hard, a slight frown on his otherwise regular features.

“I guess… I guess I don’t. Not that I don’t like you or whatever this was, but… I think I want to keep this in a special time and place in my memory, and leave it there forever? Is that silly? I guess it’s kind of silly.”

Ten can feel him starting to overthink himself stupid, and he has to stop him, pressing a kiss on his forehead.

“It’s not silly. I’m glad I can be a precious memory for you, Mark. You don’t owe me anything, although I hope you sort it out for yourself, this thing you have with this straight-questioning guy.”

“I… Thanks.”

More blushing, and Ten feels soft.

“I’ll try to sort it out too, you know. My own thing with my own straight-questioning guy,” he adds as a weird form of comfort, and it works, as Mark sighs, lets his head rest against Ten’s bony shoulder, closes his eyes, briefly.

It doesn’t last, not really, the both of them like this, because soon there’s a car driving up the trail that leads to the pension in the rainforest on the coast, Ten’s ride, some scruffy looking white guy that looks like the type Byun Baekhyun pays to do his bidding, be it getting him cocaine when he checks out producers in LA or picking up his kept boys from the places he abandoned them in. It’s a funky goodbye, waving awkwardly at Mark Lee, then grabbing his meager belongings stuffed into a travel bag, sitting in the car.

The rain starts to fall over Tofino as the Rover passes by Long Beach, and Ten thinks about the monsoon, the scorpion and the turtle, the nature of boys that are good like Mark and boys that bad like Ten. He thinks about meeting Sicheng in Beijing, and then, maybe, meeting Kun at some point, when the inevitable magnetism of their not-relationship forces them back together like a bad romantic tragicomedy.

Maybe, maybe, he figures out, as he thinks about drawn out morning with Baekhyun holding him like a lifeline, about Mark awkwardly confessing his boy troubles to him, about the ocean and the taste of salt water, that perhaps he wasn’t as bad as the feeling inside his chest that never really went away told him.

Sicheng’s true to his word, and they do meet in Beijing, sharing the kind of greasy noodles Sicheng literally inhales so fast Ten’s always surprised he manages to stay so lean. He’s still somewhat shy and reserved, still strikingly beautiful, too. Ten’s a little bit jealous, he has to admit, of Sicheng at times, all tall and lean and effortlessly gorgeous, and of him finally finding his way, attending a top dance academy and training to become a performer. Ten isn’t like that, isn’t sure of what he wants out of this life yet, and there’s a heaviness to it now, sometimes.

There’s a heaviness that comes with floating his life away, never quite attached to anything, and Qian Kun would have something witty to say about it, quoting some dusty European writer in passing. Ten doesn’t want to think about what it means that his mind keeps coming back to Kun in reflections such as these.

It feels like Sicheng found his way, and Ten’s jealous, a little bit, but Sicheng is sweet, too sweet for Ten to hate him too much. He doesn’t have that moral superiority Ten would expect from someone who left the strange, neon-bright world Ten lives in for an actual stage. He lets Ten talk about the weed he smokes, lets him do what he does with men without commenting, and most importantly, he doesn’t ask him about whatever is going on with Qian Kun at the moment. It’s good enough of an understanding that they have.

The small, family restaurant Sicheng took him too feels warm, and Ten shrugs off his sweater, the chill late summer breeze outside warranting an extra layer at night.

“So, how as the trip in Canada?”

It’s conversational, and Sicheng’s mandarin is a bit tricky to get back into understanding after spending a long time away. Still, Ten smiles, and he finds himself unfurling, a little bit. He opens up, in a way he never really felt like he could to Sicheng, talking about the sun and the sea and the waves crashing over cool sand, boys surfing the ocean on the coast of British Columbia, under the shadow of the fir trees on the raincoast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i got pissed about not finishing this one, so i'm kind of bringing it to a close soon. there's an epilogue planned for this that i'll finish at some point so everyone's story is brought to full circle~


	4. Chapter 4

#  Epilogue

##  **Mark**

Johnny Seo calls Mark up when he’s back in Vancouver, and it’s a weird kind of phone call, Mark finds himself thinking. It’s not the phone call itself, as Johnny’s kind of a weird guy who tends to phone instead of texting. Johnny’s got this hint of a drawl to his voice, and Mark finds himself wondering about Chicago, about the kind of DJ and modeling work Johnny says he gets at time, and about whatever this call is supposed to mean.

“Sure,” Mark says despite being far from it, checking his class schedule and the timetables for his last semester of university until he’s faced with the reality of adulthood hitting him in the face properly this time.

He thinks about Ten and Baekhyun a lot, nowadays, he can’t really help it, the way summer memories feel fuzzy yet calming, perfect panoramic sceneries of splashing water, surfing and weed. He’s remained true to his word, still, not wanting to initiate contact, keeping the odd couple as a strange, but still lovely memory in the back of his mind. Mark still feels that pang of deep embarrassment whenever he recalls that time he drunk offered himself to a Korean business man nearly twice his age.

He’d found himself telling everything to Lucas Wong about it during one chance encounter around UBC, and it had the transfer student giggle with a sharp spark in his eye. There’d been a offhanded comment about Mark’s ass that had made Mark punch him playfully with a blush over his cheeks.

It’s funny to see Johnny again because Johnny feels different like this, somehow. Mark can’t quite put his finger on what it is exactly, because Johnny’s still handsome in a part-time DJ, part-time model way. It’s not the first time Mark’s been to his apartment he shares with a non-descript amount of roommates the way anyone has to in the city either, but somehow there’s something off, now.

Maybe Mark’s changed, most of all. The past month or so had been rocky, from moving out of his parents’ house with a bunch of roommates after spectacularly coming out to both of them around the kitchen table upon returning from the island. That information had had Lucas Wong look at him in awe, and comment on his balls instead of his ass, for once.

Johnny and Mark fuck, and it’s not too bad. Johnny’s so tall and towering, and there’s the familiar pleasure of getting on his knees for him, looking up at his face when he presses his lips against his cock. Mark relishes in being told he’s good, and it works well with Johnny's untraceable accent, his big hands in his hair. 

When they’re done, Johnny offers to share some weed with him and Mark politely declines. They hang out like that, naked on the bed, and Johnny keeps talking about this Youtube thing he’s doing and how he’s got a gig for an 80s themed night in a local venue where he plans to mix some Bronski beat with traditional Korean instruments.

“You know, like,  _ The Age of Consent _ under flashing lights, but with hanboks, drums and sangmo hats? To cash in on the whole kpop thing that makes girls go so crazy.”

It sounds ridiculous and kind of lame. Mark idly thinks about men in makeup and Byun Baekhyun picking shiny outfits for boys he pays for in a different way than he obviously paid for Ten. He doesn’t voice it, though. Is this what figuring out his thing with his not-doing-labels crush is supposed to feel like ?

“It sounds kind of silly, dude,” he says, making Johnny giggle dismissively and he feels weird, not because the sex was bad or because of the smell of weed that’s bound to remain in his clothes after he leaves.

The weird feeling in his chest that doesn’t go when he’s on his bus ride back home is because of the sudden realization that Johnny Seo is already in the second half of his twenties, yet still spends most of his time aimlessly floating in a way that seems so cool, but very much isn’t. Just like that, it seems, with that new understanding, any of that uneasy crush he’d spent so much time angsting so much over seems to vanish. Still, he feels free, too, a little bit, now that there’s seemingly a page of his life finally being turned, another one ready to be written with fresh ink and the will to carve himself a place in the universe.

*

##  **Baekhyun**

Baekhyun doesn’t know why he’s doing this, but maybe he does, a little bit, standing outside the apartment complex with the kind of expensive flowers he’d get for a girl he’d be in love with, in another life, perhaps. It’s funny how things end up going full circle, sometimes, beyond coked-up club bathroom blowjobs and anxious morning afters waiting for a phone call and the confirmation he hasn’t caught something life changingly bad from his lifestyle of pure excess. He figures he deserves atonement, redemption arc coming to an end after running away from his problems like a lost teenager for too long.

He thought about Park Chanyeol, briefly, on the way there. The kid actually got something done after that fateful airplane ticket to LA Baekhyun had bought to get rid of him, nothing shiny or bright, writing Korean lyrics for the demos producers sell to big name performers back in the motherland, but something nonetheless. It’s good for him. He deserves it, a tiny little bit of success, whatever deserving should mean in a business like theirs.

Baekhyun feels old, and tired, really, from everything, from all of this, from working himself sick and bitter and mean. He’s done, he can feel it now, in his bones, after sending a politely worded but expeditive email to Kim Junmyeon. ‘It’s just business,’ he’d said in the following phone call, voice posed and light, almost dismissive, like it didn’t matter. Most of it, indeed, doesn’t matter anymore.

This, however, is different.

Baekhyun does what he musts, because he has to do this, beyond honor or money or atonement or fucking therapy. It’s closure. That’s the only thing it’s really about.

He’s called because he’s not an asshole, or, well, he’s a self-aware asshole, at least. It had been strange, a little bit, to hear Kyungsoo again on the other side of the line. There had been this fleeting silent moment before he’d finally gotten himself to speak, just hearing Kyungsoo’s quiet breathing on the phone speakers, knowing that Kyungsoo knew he was the one calling.

More weighted silence, more scrambling around, the new address in front of which Baekhyun is now waiting.

Kyungsoo’s not that different, same big wide eyes, same regular features, pouty lips. Even there, in a way, everything is different, and it makes so much sense, now that they’re here, standing in front of one another, the weight of the past and the future pressing on either side of the ephemeral present. Baekhyun feels dumb for not figuring it out until it exploded in his face with his darling favorite princess idol singer trying to off herself in her dorm in the middle of the night.

Kyungsoo rubs the slight stubble on his face after he greets Baekhyun, looks away, eyes shifty. There’s a few hormonal spots on the line of his jaw he’s tried to cover with makeup, to no avail, at least when it comes to Baekhyun’s trained eyes. There’s still some sadness that remains in his demeanour, a sadness that Baekhyun’s familiar with, but it’s obvious that whatever this is… Whatever this is is better for Kyungsoo.

“Opp--- I mean hyung. Baekhyun-hyung.”

They’d talked about this over the phone, him and Jongin, after everything had gone down. She’d been helpful the way Jongin’s always been helpful, that quiet, soft voice trying to comfort Baekhyun a little bit, to explain things in a way that made sense.

_ “I mean, I don’t know how it is for Kyungsoo, but for me it was always just… This discomfort, you know? Like your skin is a too-tight shirt that doesn’t fit right.” _

It had made Baekhyun briefly think about their time in the military together, Jongin back then, awkward delicate boy with a soft voice and evasive manners, doing the time, really. Baekhyun hadn’t fully understood any of it at first, when they’d reconnected later and he’d been told about the sex change, but it had started to make sense once she’d started hormones and gracefully grown into the woman Baekhyun now knew.

In lots of ways, although with a few accidents along the road, it was the same with Kyungsoo now.

They go to a cafe that’s not too far from the apartment complex Kyungsoo now lives in on his own. It’s funny to see him order an iced coffee with that deep voice, watch the barista, a girl with heavy straight bangs, bring cake to their table with blushing cheeks. Kyungsoo’s still beautiful or, well, handsome, now that Baekhyun thinks of it. It makes girls sweet for him still, face and features somewhat sharper, a little bit. He dives into the cake like a starved man in a manner that reminds Baekhyun of other, more painful times.

It’s better now. They’re both better now.

“It’s the testosterone,” Kyungsoo explains in a seemingly disinterested manner, although it’s obvious that it’s nowhere near disinterested. “Makes you only think about eating, fighting or fucking sometimes.”

Baekhyun winces. “Relatable,” he replies, and it makes Kyungsoo laugh, and there, for a short moment, Baekhyun’s heart sings.

He’s not really sure where they stand, now, him and Kyungsoo, after everything that’s still broken and frayed between them. Baekhyun’s been a bad man, he knows this, but it seems like this is a form of forgiveness, in a sense. He’s not sure. It’s hard to tell, with Kyungsoo, really.

They chat about inconsequential things, like music and Kyungsoo’s former bandmates. The girls are alright, Baekhyun’s heard, even though he’s not too sure about it. Kyungsoo tells him he’s got a girlfriend now, who does code for a big tech company while he’s in trade school for agricultural science. 

He smiles when he talks about her, about growing plants in greenhouses, about the part-time job that ignited life back inside of him after he got out of the hospital, selling flowers and succulents for meager pay but a warm satisfaction that remained with him in his chest the way singing never managed to do for him.

He looks happy, Baekhyun realizes as he walks him home, smiles, a bit.

“I’m quitting too,” he finds himself admitting, when they’re about to part ways. “The entertainment business, I mean. Not sure about the leaving the city and becoming a farmer thing, but I’ll give you a call if I plan on living my pastoral dreams anytime soon, if that’s okay with you.”

Baekhyun said that as a joke, the way he always jokes a little bit about things that are serious, and he doesn’t expect Kyungsoo to go along with it. Kyungsoo’s probably too sharp to let that slide, and he watches him with that quiet look on his features that fits him, with everything that’s changed and yet remained the same ever since him and Baekhyun parted ways.

It’s a special moment, they both know, and Baekhyun can’t help but to be reminded of their first meeting, tiny teenage girl with the pixie cut and the pretty voice, before all of this went down. This isn’t going to fix everything Baekhyun’s done to Kyungsoo, but it’s a start, maybe, like the pills and therapy and refusing to kiss and destroy a drunk surfer boy in Tofino were the start of something, too.

“I… I’m glad for you, hyung. I know I never told you this, but… You deserve it. You deserve to be happy.”

*

##  **Ten**

They meet in Tokyo, because that’s what feels like neutral ground in both of their seemingly eternally wandering lives. Kun pays for a fancy hotel room in Akasaka, and Ten jokes in Mandarin in front of the hotel before they come in about how they could fuck in the onsite onsen facilities they have there. Kun doesn’t laugh at this, but that’s part of his charms, has always been, the tight lipped smiles and the eyes cast sighs.

It’s a fun week, something of a break between two political assignments Qian Kun, the red emperor in the making Ten can see him becoming, won’t talk to him about. There are walks in gorgeous urban gardens, museum visits Ten knows Kun booked just to please him, the shy desire to hold hands Kun pushes away every time with a blush after Ten jokes about it with a tone that desperately tries not to be sour. They eat ridiculously expensive sushi, Ten knows from looking up the joints on his phone beforehand, Kun ordering in Japanese with the elegance of the prince he is. At night, they crash at closet sized gay bars in Nichome, dancing and laughing, Ten giggling in Kun’s ear about the shirtless muscular men serving them drinks just to make him blush.

They do fuck in the bed watching over the city light in that presidential suite. Kun’s gorgeous like this, riding Ten’s cock and moaning softly, chanting his name like a prayer. Ten likes it and he likes Kun, beyond the rich heir from the mainland paying for Ten’s luxury tastes out of misplaced yet so familiar unsolved daddy issues.

Kun’s leaner than the last time they saw each other, too, muscles more defined on his arms and chest. Ten wants to joke about him getting so ripped so he can court girls of his social class, the red princesses Beijing, but he hadn’t been able to do that, the words stuck in his throat as he tried to hide away the feeling of longing Kun inspired in him with sharp swallow thrusts into his awaiting body.

It’s so bad. Ten is so bad at this, and he’s going to say something stupid like admit how much he cares for Kun and their doomed modern-day gay Chinese version of Madam Butterfly.

“I love you,” he blurts out as Kun comes down from his high, collapsed next to him in bed. His eyes are closed, his breath still shaky from overstimulation. He’s gorgeous.

Ten’s words make Kun still for a moment, though, before he moves to look at Ten once more. He has that serious look on his face, and it’s so different from their usual banter, from the easy way they joke about Ten’s sugar daddies and Kun’s freudian need to excel at goals he put up for himself in a desperate grab for outside recognition.

Kun sighs.

“I know,” he says softly, and he looks up to Ten, something almost… Earnest in his expression. Like he cares.

Oh no. It hits Ten at that moment, so badly, the realisation that Kun cares. What hits him too is that he doesn’t deserve it, shouldn’t have any of it, really. It’s the scorpion and the turtle again, the feeling of sinking into the flood of the monsoon. Ten’s just not right, not for anyone, like a poisonous flower. He’s always been this way, and it’d be a shame if he ruined someone with a future as bright as Kun’s.

The silence that sets between is thick, heavy, like the air in one of the hammams Baekhyun once took Ten too, then softly made love to him in a five-stars hotel room while Ten could only think about Qian Kun. Outside, the city shines bright, sea of neon lights, their glow caressing Kun’s features as he slowly comes up to watch Ten’s expression, pressing both hands on each side of his face. 

His cheekbones are sharper than the last time they saw each other, Ten notes idly, as he lets himself be held, be kissed.

“I’m sorry,” Kun says quietly, and he smiles a little bit, hugging Ten. “I wish I could give you what you want, what you need. This will never be enough, will it?”

Ten shakes his head, and it’s weird how Kun’s words get to him as he’s promised himself never to be held down, never to be touched too deep. He finds himself getting lost in the feeling, still, because while it’s not the first time they’ve fucked, it is the first time Kun’s proved himself to be able to really get under the shell Ten’s fashioned himself.

Oh fuck. He’s crying, now.

It’s nice to break a little bit in front of Kun like this, Ten realizes as he does just that, melting into his not-quite-lover’s arms. He’s terribly ugly when he cries, he knows, remembering the words of his Chinese grandmother again, but it feels good to crash into a warm embrace. Ugly sobs upon ugly flushed cheeks, Kun’s soft hand caressing his back, quiet, sturdy, warm, feeling like the end of the world can’t wait, like the crushing weight of the past and the uncertain future is already breaking him from both sides.

Ten realizes idly, as he cries and cries and cries, that maybe he’d gotten it all wrong, that maybe there is this longing still in him, to be tied down and held like this, in a way he knows Qian Kun, gorgeous, witty, most perfect Qian Kun won’t ever be able to give him. It feels like he’s back in high school, back to breaking up like teenagers, because in a way, they’ve never really gone past the youthful stage of their relationship with one another, the push and pull that came with never really being able to tell each other how they felt, and figure out it wasn’t the same, not really at least.

It gets blurry after that, falling asleep entangled with one another, face pressed into Kun’s chest, a mild headache bound to meet him upon waking up the following day. It’s okay, because Ten dreams that night of more than fleeting sparkling moments of harmless, and maybe less harmless fun, and of what more life has to give to him if he lets it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woooo I'm glad this is finished! Thank you for putting up with me for awhile, please take care of yourselves and be well :3

**Author's Note:**

> This spawned from a discussion about Mark Lee growing up in Vancouver and then I kind of had to pin all the British Columbia stereotypes on him all at once, along with just making myself long from that time I got to spend in Tofino awhile back. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but thank you if you've read so far!


End file.
